Canada Announces New Steel and Aluminum Import Protections

The Department of Finance Canada is deploying changes to antidumping regulations “to ensure that an appropriate level of anti-dumping duties can be applied to goods that are dumped into Canada,” it said in an Aug. 23 news release. “This will provide greater flexibility to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to address situations where there may be distortions in the price of the goods in the country of export. It clarifies alternative methods to calculate the costs of production of the imported goods, in cases where the price of inputs is distorted because of purchases made between affiliated companies or because of a particular market situation.”

New policies will also make it “easier for the CBSA to compare the price of the goods imported into Canada with the price of the goods sold by the same exporter to a different country, to find whether there is dumping,” it said. “Changes will also allow the CBSA to better identify dumping that occurs in targeted patterns and is hidden by high prices.” A new aluminum import monitoring system will also improve how it tracks incoming aluminum, it said. Starting Sept. 1, aluminum importers will be required to cite General Import Permit (GIP) No. 83 “on CBSA import declarations in order to import the products into Canada,” it said. Global Affairs Canada will also now “be able to ask certain importers to submit detailed reports on their imports of steel, to help identify any possible errors in import data and determine the source of any inconsistencies in a targeted manner,” it said.

Global Affairs Canada issued two notices to importers related to the updates. One notice covers “Steel General Import Permits No. 80 and 81 -- Carbon and Specialty Steel Products.” The other notice is on GIP No. 83 for aluminum products.