Insight

Anti-dumping: The industry’s viewpoint

In the last edition of Fastener + Fixing Magazine we invited the European Fastener Distributors Association and the European Industrial Fasteners Institute to give us their perspective on the anti-dumping investigation into imports of certain iron or steel fasteners from the People’s Republic of China (2020/C 442/06). For this issue we have invited individual manufacturers and distributors to give us their perspective.

Nobody’s thoughts have been omitted. If ideas or beliefs are not represented it is simply because they were not provided. Through necessity of space, some contributions have been edited, but we have been meticulous in retaining the core of each contributor’s perspective. We also gave companies the opportunity to remain anonymous if they preferred. We make no claim for how representative these assessments are, but they represent both sides of the discussion and make for a fascinating read.

Fastener + Fixing Magazine has been in contact with several manufacturers to discuss the anti-dumping investigation. Whilst they would prefer to stay anonymous they have agreed for us to accumulate these thoughts into one main article.

European distributors and manufacturers have a long history of working together and this will always be true. There are long-lasting partnerships between manufacturers and distributors across every country in Europe and we do not want to damage these relationships. However, at the same time we believe the anti-dumping investigation is required for the health of manufacturers.

Distributors argue that this will lead to supplies from China coming to a dramatic halt, similar to in 2009, but this is not necessarily the case. The tariffs that were introduced in 2009 were significantly higher than even manufacturers expected. This gave rise to Asian companies looking to circumvent the tariffs, which was very dangerous and led to European distributors getting heavily fined.

However, as manufacturers we are not asking for imports from China to stop, we are just asking for a level playing field. A sensible tariff level would see distributors still able to buy from China if they wished, but would also make manufacturers within Europe more competitive and provide an opportunity for us to develop our range and capabilities to further support the distribution market. The last twelve months, with the pandemic, as well as container and freight issues, have underlined the critical importance of having manufacturing within Europe to support supply chains. A balanced tariff will only help to improve that situation and enable manufacturers to provide more options to distributors.

Distributors will point out that they cannot get the volumes required from Europe for all the products in the investigation, but the reason for this is because of the unfair balance in pricing. Why would you invest in this type of machinery or products when you know you will still not be competitive? With a reasonable tariff we can look to provide further options for customers and there would be no need for wholesale changes, but rather additional buying options.

There are two sides of this argument, but like many things in life there is a middle point where both distributors and manufacturers can meet. Hopefully this investigation and responsible tariffs will enable this to happen.