Trade Remedy Measures: UK Interests

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

In evidence given about the formation of the TRA, the Law Society of Scotland said:

“it is important that any assessment of impact of particular trade measures takes into account a wide range of stakeholder interests. This should involve balancing the interests of producers and consumers, which may sometimes be directly opposed, as well as consideration of the wider public interest.”

That, of course, means consideration of measures such as the anti-dumping and subsidy measures that were in the provisional report published last July.

The methodology for determining whether measures would be maintained or rescinded, again published last July, included a great deal about production—supporting firms’ production, total domestic production, opposing firms’ production—and a great deal about the market, UK firms’ domestic sales and total domestic sales including imports. Those who have solely producer metrics are in the tables that were published last July—the producer application received, the support threshold met, the market share threshold met—and that led to some apparently contradictory decisions. Reinforcing bar from Belarus would have its measures terminated, but reinforcing bar from China would have its measures maintained. Tubes and pipes of ductile cast iron from India would be terminated, but welded tubes and pipes of iron or non-alloy steel from Belarus would be maintained. There were contradictions in what were apparently similar items.

May I therefore ask the Secretary of State—I know the updated version will be published soon—why was no weight given to the consumer interest explicitly? Why was no weight given to the wider public interest explicitly? Why do those outcomes seem so arbitrary for what would appear at face value to be similar products?

[Dr Fox]

Our intention is to maintain protection where there is a case to protect British businesses from unfair trading practices. We have looked at the evidence that the EU put in place to have these remedies in the first place and we think there is a suitable case for doing it. The hon. Gentleman asked me a very specific question about rebar steel. The reason that we have maintained measures on China and terminated measures in other cases is because no producer interest was expressed. They made no application for that to happen during the call for evidence and therefore, it did not fall within the criteria that we set out for the consultation and which I reiterated in my statement.