The Government of Canada is continuing to strengthen Canada’s ability to protect steel and aluminum industries, as well as the jobs and communities that rely on them, from unfairly traded imports.
Building on previous actions, the Government today introduced regulations and policy changes that will help improve Canada’s trade remedy system for all sectors.
Anti-Dumping Regulations
Amendments are being made to the Special Import Measures Regulations to ensure that an appropriate level of anti-dumping duties can be applied to goods that are dumped into Canada.
This will provide greater flexibility to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to address situations where there may be distortions in the price of the goods in the country of export. It clarifies alternative methods to calculate the costs of production of the imported goods, in cases where the price of inputs is distorted because of purchases made between affiliated companies or because of a particular market situation.
Anti-Dumping Policy Changes
The CBSA is also introducing policy changes that will provide further flexibility to determine whether goods are being dumped into Canada. This will make it easier for the CBSA to compare the price of the goods imported into Canada with the price of the goods sold by the same exporter to a different country, to find whether there is dumping. Changes will also allow the CBSA to better identify dumping that occurs in targeted patterns and is hidden by high prices.
Steel and Aluminum Import Monitoring
Canada will also establish an aluminum import monitoring regime and strengthen the current steel import monitoring system.
Starting September 1, 2019, certain aluminum products will be added to the Import Control List and General Import Permit (GIP) No. 83 – Aluminum Products will come into force. Aluminum importers will be required to cite the GIP on CBSA import declarations in order to import the products into Canada. As a direct result of these changes, the industry and the Government will have access to more timely aluminum import data—making it easier to quickly identify whether global oversupply of aluminum is making its way to Canada.
In terms of the steel monitoring system, Global Affairs Canada will now be able to ask certain importers to submit detailed reports on their imports of steel, to help identify any possible errors in import data and determine the source of any inconsistencies in a targeted manner. Improvements are also being made to clarify the documentation requirements for importers. This will support the accurate tracking of imports and import patterns, to better identify when the import situation may require trade remedy action and to track the pattern of imports once a trade remedy is in place. The aluminum GIP will also be equipped with such a requirement.
These actions are the result of consultations with the steel and aluminum industries, workers, and other stakeholders from various sectors on ways to improve Canada’s trade remedy and import monitoring regimes. They also build on steps taken by the Government to address unfair trade, including legislative and regulatory amendments introduced in April 2018 to enhance the effectiveness of Canada’s trade remedy system, as well as additional funding for the CBSA to strengthen its trade investigations and enforcement capacity.
Exclusions From Steel Safeguards
Canadian steel producers of heavy plate and stainless steel wire also continue to be protected by safeguard measures imposed on those two product categories in October 2018. The Government is now excluding certain specific products from these measures (seven exclusions for heavy plate, one for stainless steel wire), following the recommendations made by the Canadian International Trade Tribunal (CITT) in the exclusion inquiry that concluded on July 15, 2019. The exclusions aim to ensure that Canadian companies have access to surtax-free sources of supply of the products concerned, given that the CITT determined that they are not available in Canada. The Government will also remit safeguard surtaxes paid on imports of the excluded products since October 2018.
This is a 23 August 2019 news release from the Department of Finance Canada.