EU Duties Will Disrupt Fastener Supply Chain4

At 86.5%, the planned duties on Chinese fasteners are even higher than those imposed from 2009 to 2016, which were eventually withdrawn following a succession of negative rulings against the EU by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). During that period the import flow from China completely collapsed. European manufacturers, despite assurances to the Commission to the contrary, were either unable or unwilling to the shortfall - which was substituted almost entirely by importers moving to other Asian manufacturing countries.

Now, despite extensive evidence from EFDA, the Commission is apparently intent on going one better! In a supply-chain environment massively and critically worse than in 2009, the proposed duties are set to almost double prices that have already exploded in the last twelve months. In addition to driving inflation for the wide range of European fastener users and consumers, the application of duties will put even more strain on the already tightly constrained capacities of manufacturers outside China and further increase supply bottlenecks, Given the supply crisis already in place and the force of the proposed duties, the consequences for the economy and consumers will be devastating. The Commission, however, completely ignores these consequences!

The planned duties on Chinese fasteners will create an unbridgeable permanent supply gap that will not be covered by switching to manufacturers in Europe or elsewhere in the world. In other East Asian markets such as Taiwan, Thailand or Vietnam, production capacities have already been exhausted since US companies began claiming resources here a few years ago in response to the Trump administration's protectionist duties on Chinese imports.