ITC recommends washing-machine tariffs
USA - The US International Trade Commission on Tuesday recommended tariffs to keep Samsung and LG from flooding the US market with inexpensive washers, a step that would protect American appliance giant Whirlpool. The ITC said a graduated tariff rate should be placed on imports of large residential washing machines above a 1.2 million-unit threshold over the next three years, starting at 50 percent the first year and sliding to 40 percent by the third. The panel was split on whether tariffs should be imposed if fewer than 1.2 million units were imported in any given year. President Donald Trump is expected to make a decision on the recommendation by early next year.
The ITC found last month that surging imports harmed domestic producers, although it did not find that washers made specifically in South Korea, already subject to antidumping duties, were responsible. Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics said any tariff would raise prices, limit consumer choices and hurt job creation. The South Korean firms plan to open home appliance factories in the United States in the next few years, which could cushion the blow from possible import tariffs. “Import restrictions would jeopardize LG’s US jobs by hindering the ramp-up of the Tennessee factory,” LG said. The company is projected to sell about 1.2 million washing machines in the United States this year, an LG spokesman said. He added that combined US sales by LG and Samsung would reach about 2.5 million, well above the recommended quota. A Samsung spokesman said its US sales number was not immediately available. Samsung said any tariffs “would harm the workers in our South Carolina factory, or limit them from delivering innovative washing machines, made by Americans for Americans”. Lawmakers from South Carolina, where Samsung is building a factory, had written to the ITC to ask that any remedies not be too severe. South Korea’s trade ministry, after meeting officials from Samsung and LG later on Wednesday, said the government plans to consider whether or not to complain to the World Trade Organization depending on Trump’s final decision on the tariffs. A 20 percent tariff, if applied to imports below the 1.2 million quota, will “deal a big blow to South Korean firms’ exports to the United States”, the ministry said in a statement.
(Reuters)