Titan Tire Corp. and the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, AFL-CIO, CLC, (USW) are joining forces again to ask the U.S. Department of Commerce and International Trade Commission to levy anti-dumping and countervailing duties on off-the-road tires imported from India, China and Sri Lanka.
The petition matches a June 2007 request by the same parties seeking tariffs on OTR tires imported from China. (Those duties were imposed in September 2007, reviewed five years later, and extended in 2013 and remain in place today.) This new case extends the tariff request to India and Sri Lanka, and also seeks protection from tires mounted on wheels, in addition to unmounted tires.
The scope of the investigation covers OTR tires for use in “agricultural fields, forests, construction sites, factory and warehouse interiors, airport tarmacs, ports and harbors, mines, quarries, gravel yards and steel mills.”
Titan and the union “believe that imports of certain OTR tires from China and India are being sold for less than their fair value, imports of certain OTR tires from China, India and Sri Lanka are benefitting from countervailable subsidies, and cumulated imports from the three countries are causing material injury, or threatening injury, to the domestic industry producing certain OTR tires.”
Titan, relying in part on data published by Modern Tire Dealer in its 2015 Facts Issue, estimates it accounts for 46.4% of daily OTR tire production in the U.S.
Combined with the production of OTR tire plants also represented by the USW, the two parties say they represent 58.1% of the OTR production in the U.S. (The USW represents workers in three Titan plants, in Bryan, Ohio, Des Moines, Iowa, and Freeport, Ill., as well as two Bridgestone Americas Inc. plants and one Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant.)
