Trade Cases

US Scraps Suspension Agreement, Imposes AD Duties on Russian Plate

August 14, 2023

US plate producers were successful in their most recent effort to have the suspension agreement on cut-to-length plate imports from Russia removed and replaced with antidumping duties.

The US Department of Commerce announced this week it is terminating the suspension agreement, which dates back to 2003.

In place of the suspension agreement, Commerce has now imposed antidumping duties CTL carbon steel plate that enters the country from the Russian Federation.

Commerce assigned weighted-average dumping margins of 53.81% for Severstal and 185% for all other Russian companies.

In 2015, Nucor, Cleveland-Cliffs, and SSAB petitioned Commerce to end the agreement, but that effort was unsuccessful.

This April, the same companies once again asked for termination of the agreement. Their reasoning was that the 2003 agreement was no longer in the public interest, as Commerce reclassified Russia as a non-market economy in November 2022.

The domestic steelmakers did not respond to SMU’s request for comment.

Laura Miller

Laura Miller is a reporter and editor for Steel Market Update. Since 2007, she has held various editorial and marketing positions with steel industry publications, associations, and mills. In 2021, after a five-year hiatus working across other industries, she returned to steel trade journalism, joining SMU in 2022. She is a member of the Association of Women in the Metal Industries and a past-president of the AWMI Pittsburgh Chapter. She holds a BA in Latin American Studies from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. She can be reached at laura@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7869.