The US International Trade Commission (ITC) has decided to stop investigation into the case without adopting anti-dumping measures, said an official with the CCCMC.

The ITC voted unanimously on Wednesday that made-in-China steel cables had not done substantial damage or posed threat of damage to US steel cable producers, he said.

This virtually invalidated the US Department of Commerce's final dumping ruling and clearly absolved the Chinese side of the charge, said the official. According to US anti-dumping rules, anti-dumping measures are possible only if the Department of Commerce decides that dumping exists and the ITC rules that imports damage domestic industries.

He added that US importers who were asked to turn in a certain amount of cash as guarantee for importing made-in-China steel cables following the initial verdict will now get reimbursed.

The US side started to press the anti-dumping charges against various kinds of steel cables from China and India last March. The case involves about US$10 million worth of Chinese-made steel cables.

The US Department of Commerce ruled for the levying of anti-dumping charges ranging from 24 per cent to 119 per cent on the Chinese steel cables, based on the much higher prices charged by countries other than China, according to the CCCMC.

In its final ruling, the US Department of Commerce accepted the Chinese companies' argument that the other countries' prices were too high and changed its method of computing the prices of Chinese-made steel cables, but it still maintains that Chinese companies had dumped their cable on the US market, although not at the rates first claimed.

(China Daily 03/25/2001)