AK Steel Holding Corporation (AKS) is upbeat following the U.S. International Trade Commission’s (ITC) preliminary ruling in its favor that unfairly traded imports of non-oriented electrical steel (NOES) produced in several foreign countries is hampering the company.
AK Steel, in Sep 2013, filed petitions with the ITC and the United States Department of Commerce (Commerce Department) alleging unfairly traded imports of NOES from six producer countries including China, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and Taiwan that was causing material injury to the domestic industry.
AK Steel also filed antidumping cases against all six countries along with countervailing duty cases, alleging subsidization in China, South Korea and Taiwan.
The case is now in the hands of Commerce Department and they are determining the facts that whether foreign producers are actually violating U.S. antidumping law by selling their products at less than fair value in the U.S., and U.S. countervailing duty law covering government subsidies.
The Commerce Department will be taking measures to calculate antidumping margins, which are designed to offset the amount by which the product is sold at less than fair value, and subsidy rates, which are designed to offset the amount by which the product benefits from unfair government subsidies.
Following this verification, the Commerce Department will be collecting the estimated antidumping duties from importers from the date when the preliminary determinations were filed to the Commerce Department. The date for the estimated antidumping duties collection is expected to be Mar 26, 2014.
The Commerce Department has the rights to impose antidumping and countervailing duties in retrospective for a period of 90 days prior to the preliminary determinations if the foreign producers try to make massive shipments into the U.S. market before the Commerce Department's preliminary determinations.
NOES is an alloy steel formed by a combination of silicon, carbon and aluminum. It contains more than 1% of silicon and not more than 0.08% of carbon or 1.5% of aluminum and has a surface oxide coating, to which an insulation coating may be applied. Specialized rolling and annealing process are used for manufacturing NOES. It is broadly used in the production of motors and generators.
Joe Dorn and Steve Jones of the law firm King and Spalding LLP are helping AK Steel in these legal actions.
Ohio-based AK Steel is a leading producer of flat-rolled carbon, stainless, electrical steel and tubular products.
AK Steel currently retains a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Other companies in the steel and related industries with favorable Zacks Rank are Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (SID), United States Steel Corp. (X) and Worthington Industries, Inc. (WOR). While Companhia Siderurgica holds a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), both United States Steel and Worthington retain a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
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