The Government has today (23 October) imposed new measures to
protect the UK’s growing optical fibre cables industry from
unfair trading practices from China, agreeing with the TRA’s
recommendations on dumping
and subsidisation. It is
estimated that the value this growing industry adds to the UK
economy is worth £88 million.
Optical fibre cable is used in the delivery of broadband services
to homes and businesses and around 5.7 million fibre kilometres
of it was sold in the UK in 2021, including UK producer sales and
imported goods. The TRA investigated whether imports of these
products were dumped in the UK at prices below what they would
sell for in their home country, and if they were sold at unfair
prices due to subsidies in two separate cases (AD0021 and
AS0022).
The UK market in optical fibre cable is expected to grow over the
next five years, driven by network upgrades as demand for
broadband increases as well as the Government’s investment in
broadband infrastructure, such as Project Gigabit – a £5
billion programme to enable hard-to-reach communities to access
faster broadband. The TRA has estimated that UK-produced optical
fibre accounts for around half of all UK consumption, with the
rest of the market supplied by imports from China, India, the US,
Poland, and Germany.
The investigation concluded that the UK market suffered injury
from both subsidised and dumped optical fibre cables from China.
To protect the UK industry, trade remedy measures will now be
implemented. The new anti-dumping duties range from 23% to 46.2%,
and the new countervailing duties rates range from 10.62% and
11.79%.
Background information:
- The Trade Remedies Authority initiated this case on 26 April
2022.
- The Period of Investigation for the anti-subsidy and
anti-dumping investigations is 01 January 2021 to 31 December
2021. To assess injury, the TRA has chosen to examine the period
from 01 January 2018 to 31 December 2021 as the injury period
(IP).
- The Trade Remedies Authority is the UK body that investigates
whether new trade remedy measures are needed to counter unfair
import practices and unforeseen surges of imports.
- The TRA is an arm’s length body of the Department for
Business & Trade.
- UK industries concerned about imports can submit applications
to the TRA for a new trade remedy measure.
- These are the third and fourth new investigations that the
TRA has opened and they follow an investigation
into potential dumping of Aluminium Extrusions that opened in
June 2021 and a case
involving ironing boards from Turkey which began in May 2022.
- Anti-dumping remedies address imported goods which are being
dumped in the UK at prices below what they would be sold for in
their home country.
- Countervailing remedies deal with imports which benefit from
specific subsidies in their home country which lower their
production costs. Not all government subsidies are
countervailable (can be countered using trade remedies) – the
TRA’s guidance on subsidy
investigations explains this in detail.
- Period of Investigation – when we are investigating dumping
and subsidy cases, we will use a period of investigation of
around a year. We will aim for the end point to be as close as
possible to the date of initiation. However, we will decide this
on a case-by-case basis.
