At the end of a five day official visit during which he met his Chinese counterpart, US Secretary of Commerce Don Evans urged his hosts to ensure that their anti-dumping investigation into Corning Inc…
At the end of a five day official visit during which he met his Chinese counterpart, US Secretary of Commerce Don Evans urged his hosts to ensure that their anti-dumping investigation into Corning Inc is “open and transparent” and complies with international trade rules. “We talked about how important it is that any dumping order against Corning to be an open and transparent process and we emphasized how important it is that the process be WTO-compliant,” Evans said. “We made our points and will continue to have an active dialogue with them.” On 16 June 2004, the Chinese commerce ministry said in a statement that it made a preliminary ruling that major optical fiber producers in the US, South Korea and Japan, including Corning, dumped “Dispersion Unshifted Single-Mode Optical Fiber” into China. The preliminary ruling required Chinese importers of US, South Korean and Japanese-made optical fiber to pay a cash deposit equal to 7-46% of the prices to Chinese customs authorities. On 21 June 2004, the government decided to extend the anti-dumping investigation for another six months until 1 January 2005, the Ministry of Commerce said. Corning later denied dumping optical fiber into China and causing injury to the Chinese domestic producers. While the dumping issue was of “concern” to the US, it is a normal part of a developing trade relationship, Evans said. “Anytime you have a growing trading economic relationship with a country there will always be issues that you must work through and discuss and what this administration is committed to doing is working through issues in a candid and frank way,” he said. “What we are trying to do is to strengthen this relationship. That will be in the long term best interests of not only the US but also the good citizens of China.” China“s investigation started on 1 July 2003, at the request of two domestic optical fiber makers, Jiangsu Fasten Photonics Co Ltd and Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable Company Ltd.