TRA recommendation for new duties on Chinese excavators accepted

The Secretary of State for Business and Trade has accepted the TRA’s recommendation to impose new anti-dumping and countervailing measures on imports of excavators from China to the UK.

The anti-dumping duties range from 18.81% for a sampled exporter to 40.08% for the residual rate; while the countervailing duties range from 0% to 2.98%. The TRA has estimated that the measures could benefit UK excavator producers by up to £26 million per year.

The measures will be imposed on imports of excavators from China weighing 11 tonnes or more, but less than 80 tonnes as the TRA found that there is no UK industry for the production of excavators weighing 80 tonnes or above. The TRA has therefore determined that the UK industry would not be injured by these products.

The TRA opened its investigation in November 2023 in response to an application from JCB, a Staffordshire-based multinational business. It found that Chinese exporters were able to use reduced production costs to price their exports below UK competitors who did not benefit from an artificially low-cost base.

Legal challenge

In February, Caterpillar (Xuzhou) Ltd. (CXL) launched a judicial review against the TRA and the Department of Business and Trade’s decision to impose provisional anti-dumping measures on imports of Chinese excavators.

The judgment in the judicial review was handed down on 9 May, with the claims against both the TRA and Secretary of State for Business and Trade ruled as unarguable. The judge in the case concluded that the TRA, in its decisions surrounding the provisional anti-dumping measures, had acted lawfully, rationally and in a procedurally fair manner. The judgement did not affect the decision to apply definitive anti-dumping or countervailing measures.

Background information:

• The periods of investigation for both the anti-dumping and countervailing cases were 1 July 2022 – 30 June 2023.
• The TRA is the UK body that investigates whether trade remedy measures are needed to counter unfair trading practices and unforeseen surges of imports.
• Anti-dumping duties allow a country or union to act against goods which are being sold at less than their normal value – this is defined as the price for ‘like goods’ sold in the exporter’s home market.
• Countervailing duties are designed to counteract government subsidies that cause material injury to domestic industries.
• The judgement in the judicial review can be read in full here.