In the 15 years up to 2015, China increased its steel production fivefold as it forged the

steel products Demanded by its huge boom in construction and infrastructure spending. By 2015,
the country produced 800 million tons of steel a year, half of the world’s annual output.
However, in 2015 the bottom fell out of the Chinese domestic market for steel. The economy
slowed down, and the government shifted its priorities away from massive infrastructure
investments and toward boosting consumer spending. By the end of 2015, Chinese steelmakers
were estimated to be producing 300 million more tons of steel a year than required for domestic
consumption.
With prices for steel slumping, China’s largest 101 steel firms lost more than $12 billion in 2015,
roughly twice what they made in profits during 2014. Not surprisingly, the Chinese are seeking
to export this unwanted product, even if it is at a loss. China exported more than 100 million tons
of steel for the first time in 2015, making its steel exports alone larger than the production of any
other country in the world except for Japan. The prices for Chinese steel products appear to at
least 10 percent lower outside of China than within the country.
Those low-priced exports are having a devastating impact on steelmakers around the
globe. American producers have responded by clamoring for action from the U.S. Commerce
Department to stop what they perceive to be the illegal dumping of steel products below the costs
of production. Moreover, they have argued that cheap steel from China has also persuaded
producers in India, Italy, South Korea, and Taiwan to dump their excess production on the world
market, further harming U.S. producers. In November 2015, the Commerce Department ruled
that all of these countries except Taiwan were dumping steel and placed duties as high as 236
percent on some imports of foreign steel. In late December, the Commerce Department ruled that
China was also selling corrosionresistant steel at unfairly low prices and placed an additional
256 percent tariff on such imports. This erected a huge barrier to certain Chinese steel imports
into the United States.
The European Union also took similar steps. The United Kingdom has been particularly
hard hit by Chinese imports. Chinese imports now take 45 percent of the UK market for steel
rebar, up from nothing in 2010. Overall, steel imports from China doubled between 2014 and
2015. The United Kingdom lost some 4,000 steelmaking jobs in the second half of 2015 as the
Chinese grabbed market share. Elsewhere in Europe, the Luxembourgbased steel giant
ArcelorMittal blamed dumping by Chinese firms for a $8 billion loss in 2015.
In response, in January 2016, the EU placed a 13 percent tariff on imports of Chinese
steel. EU steelmakers called this totally inadequate, particularly given the much large tariffs
levied in the United States. In mid-2016, the EU responded by placing tariffs as high as 22
percent on imports of non–stainless steel products from China. For its part, the Chinese
government remained unmoved. In fact, it may have added fuel to the fire in December 2015
when it cut export taxes on several types of steel, signaling perhaps that it was doubling down on
a strategy to encourage domestic producers to export their surplus production rather than close
mills.