The U.S. Commerce Department supported an antidumping complaint filed by the U.S. steel industry against tin products shipped from Japan in its final ruling.
If the Tuesday ruling is upheld in the International Trade Commission's final decision expected in July, antidumping duties corresponding to dumping margins will be levied on Japanese imports.
The Commerce Department set a dumping margin of 95.29 percent for tin products imported from NKK Corp., Nippon Steel Corp., Kawasaki Steel Corp. and Toyo Kohan Co.
The dumping margin for products from all other Japanese tin makers was set at 32.52 percent.
In October, West Virginia-based Weirton Steel Corp., along with the Independent Steelworkers Union and the United Steelworkers of America, lodged a dumping complaint with the ITC and the Commerce Department against the imports.
The complaint said 476,800 tons of tin products were imported into the United States through August 1999, with Japan accounting for 50.1 percent of the total.
Japan's share of the entire U.S. tin market reportedly rose to 9.1 percent in the first eight months of 1999, up from 6 percent in the same period of 1998.