São Paulo – Brazil’s Foreign Trade Chamber (Camex), the federal government’s policy-making body for the sector, has decided to levy definitive antidumping duties on float glass imports from six countries, including Arab countries Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The ruling has been published this Friday (19th) on the Brazilian Official Gazette.
The ruling stems from a trial held last July, following which provisional antidumping charges were applied to said imports. Provisional charges are valid for six months, whereas the definitive ones remain in effect for as long as five years. Antidumping is a commercial protection tool employed whenever a country sells its products abroad at lower prices than the ones charged domestically.
Whether antidumping duties are applied or not hinges on an investigative process. In this case, procedures started in January 2013, at the request of glass industry association Associação Técnica Brasileira das Indústrias Automáticas de Vidro (Abividro), which filed a petition to the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade on behalf of the companies Cebrace Cristal Plano and Guardian do Brasil Vidros Planos.
As per Camex’s ruling, surcharges are to be levied upon imports of flat colourless float glass from 2mm to 19mm thick from the aforementioned countries. The product’s number under the Mercosur Common Nomenclature (NCM) is 7005.29.00. According to the ministry, this type of glass is used by the auto, civil construction, furniture and decoration, road transportation and home appliances industries.
Camex has set the surcharge at US$ 202.26 per tonne for imports from Saudi Arabia, US$ 185.74 per tonne for imports from Egypt, and US$ 83.40 to 148.57 per tonne for imports from the UAE. Surcharges ranging from US$ 97.10 to US$ 392.55 are also in place for imports from the United States, Mexico and China.
According to data from the ministry, Brazil has imported US$ 38.3 million worth of this type of glass from January to November this year, much less than the US$ 100.4 million from January to November 2013.
The leading suppliers of the product to Brazil this year have been China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Mexico, Turkey, the United States, Spain, Germany, Colombia and Egypt.
Imports from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, the United States and Mexico have declined sharply in 2014 from 2013; imports from China declined by a lower rate.
Click the link below to view the full text of Camex resolution 121 (in Portuguese):
http://pesquisa.in.gov.br/imprensa/jsp/visualiza/index.jsp?data=19/12/2014&jornal=1&pagina=70&totalArquivos=432
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
