EU Duties Will Disrupt Fastener Supply Chain5

European fastener manufacturers are not available as substitutes either. Their capacities are already stretched now, and there is no improvement in sight. Almost without exception, European manufacturers produce high-quality special parts, e.g for the global automotive industry, whereas imports from China regard the simpler standard parts. For these standard parts EU producers will never provide sufficient production capacity. They did not do so either when duties were imposed on Chinese fasteners from 2009 to 2016.

In 2016, the Commission was obliged to withdraw its anti-dumping duties overnight due to a series of WTO rulings that demonstrated their basis was irreparably flawed. "Now the Commission is repeating its mistakes by imposing disproportionately high duties without any need. A duty level of 86.5% in no way reflects the realities of the market. As in 2009, the Commission calculates the duty level on a data basis that is not representative at all. It is based on the costs and price of one single fastener product type out of several hundred, produced by one out of many Chinese fastener manufacturers. The Commission deliberately chose this particular approach because it yields the largest margin for a duty and makes it the benchmark for the China business.