US puts 522% tarrif on Chinese cold roll steel

[toad]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-1 ... e-522-duty
I suspect this could be regarded as war by other means as well as an anti dumping measure.

[First Shirt]

Back in the late 90s, a lot of US companies bought cheap Chinese steel. A goodly number of those companies went broke, because the steel they paid for was not what they ordered, they couldn't use it, and couldn't afford to buy the steel to replace what wouldn't work.

The Chinese approach to steelmaking is very simple. If it will sink, it will sell. Grade, alloy, tensile strength, strip width, and gauge (thickness) are all more "wishes" than production goals. (We won't even discuss short-weight or mis-labeled coils, but I would like to point out that one Chinese supplier, that the Chinese government would REALLY like to have a chat with, frequently sold the same coil to two or different three buyers.)

Despite what anyone says about the steel industry, American steel is the best bang for the buck in the world, in terms of quality, delivery times, and prices.

(We've sold 15,000 tons to a couple of Chinese manufacturers this year, because they can order 500 tons of 1022RS/CM at 49.5 inches wide, and 0.110 thick, AND GET IT, which rarely the case with locally-sourced steel.)

[Darrell]

I've doubtless posted this before, but hell, it's good, so here it is again. John Derbyshire's Chinese Junk:

http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Reviews/C ... ymade.html

[Netpackrat]

Good. A few years ago, the main mill that produced 4130n aircraft steel shut down, and for a time all that was available was Chinese. There was no end of trouble with that crap... Things like improper/nonexistent heat treat, inconsistent tubing wall thickness, inclusions, etc. Caused a lot of problems, a few ADs, and who knows how many latent issues that will bite people in the future (a lot of this stuff was sold to the experimental/homebuilt market). It's my understanding that non-chinese suppliers were eventually found and if you buy 4130 today most of it is good, but a lot of that crap found its way into airplanes. A good friend of mine used it to build his fuselage, and while his workmanship is stellar, when his airplane is finished, I will probably come up with a series of excuses to not be able to fly in it.

[Jered]

Makes sense. I think we caught some dumping at work.

I think there's some sort of ruling that bans CAT excavators from outside of north American from importation into the United States.

[MiddleAgedKen]

I just read Poorly Made in China a couple of months ago. Good book.

[Termite]

The Chinese approach to steelmaking is very simple. If it will sink, it will sell. Grade, alloy, tensile strength, strip width, and gauge (thickness) are all more "wishes" than production goals.

This problem has popped up in the oil & gas industry.
Some slick Chinese company decided to clone Crosby shackles; but didn't bother with proper steel content, heat treatment, etc. LINK

The fake shackles were failing at about 40% of supposed rated capacity; and real Crosby shackles have a 6:1 design factor. This should give an idea of just what junk steel the fakes were made of.

It is distinctly un-funny for a shackle to fail when using a crane to lift loads that weigh many thousands of pounds. Really bad things happen.

[First Shirt]

That's why the shackles that we buy come from a certified Crosby supplier, and have all the certifications attached. If I'm making a pick with a 120-ton crane, and the load is 85 tons, I expect that the 120-ton shackle will hold up to the load.

Just as an info item, the overpass in Minnesota over the Mississippi river that failed was built with steel from China because it "was cheaper."

[Kommander]

Do you mean the I-35W Mississippi River bridge because that thing was, according to Wikipedia built from 1964 to 1967. That should predate the use of cheap Chinese steel.

[NVGdude]

It's not just Steel. Pretty much all Chinese materials science is crap. Heat treat, surface treatments, alloys.

They can often get the form factor correct, but the materials qualities...