Tires Made in Southeast Asia Will Be More Expensive

Tires from South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam are about to get more pricey, as the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) announced yesterday preliminary duties in the antidumping duty (AD) investigations of passenger vehicle and light truck tires from those countries.

The DOC issued a preliminary decision that passenger and light truck tires imported from South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam are being sold in the U.S. at less than fair value, or dumped. The dumping margins were calculated at 14.24 to 38.07 percent for South Korea, 52.42 to 98.44 percent for Taiwan, 13.25 to 22.21 percent for Thailand, and 0 to 22.30 percent for Vietnam. The DOC instructed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to collect deposits from tire importers based on those preliminary rates.

The United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, AFL-CIO, CLC, also known as the United Steelworkers Union, petitioned the DOC to investigate alleged dumping and subsidies for the tires. The DOC had already issued a preliminary ruling that Vietnamese tire producers received unfair subsidies associated with their undervalued currency. The DOC calculated duty rates ranging from 6.23 percent to 10.08 percent, with final anti-dumping and countervailing duty decisions by mid-March 2021. The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has already made a determination that the industry in the U.S. is being harmed by alleged dumping and subsidies.

Gardena, California-based Tireco, Inc., is one of the nation’s largest distributors of private-brand wheels and tires, which includes Forté wheels, Sendel wheels, Milestar tires, WestLake tires, and Nankang tires. Taiwan-based Nankang would be among those impacted by a 98.44 percent dumping rate, the highest of any cited.

To date, the DOC maintains 542 AD and countervailing duty decision (CVD) orders which provide relief to American companies and industries impacted by unfair trade.

Since the beginning of the Trump Administration, the DOC has initiated 306 new AD investigations, a 278 percent increase from a comparable period in the Obama Administration. A strange alliance, the AFL-CIO Steelworkers Union and the Trump Administration, or is it?

[Images: Tireco, U.S. Dept. of Commerce]