On August 7 in Washington, US Department of Commerce announced the preliminary ruling of the investigation against China’s aluminum foil countervailing and the 16.56%-to- 80.97% subsidy range for Chinese enterprises. Director of MOFCOM Trade Remedy and Investigation Bureau Wang Hejun made a statement on this.

Wang pointed out that in the case of raw material subsidy，the investigation authority of the US ignored the active cooperation of the Chinese government and enterprises and ruled without any foundation the Chinese producers of primary aluminum and steam coal as “public institution” providing “subsidies” for downstream firms. In the case of policy-based lending, the investigation authority neglected the marketization of China’s bank industry and continued to define Chinese commercial bank as “public institution” subsidizing Chinese enterprises through lending and calculating high subsidy range based on unreasonable foreign benchmark interest rates. In the case of export buyer’s credit, the investigation authority asked the Chinese government and responding enterprises to prove that companies involved in this case did not use the charged credit thus wrongly transferring the burden of proof to China.

Wang said that the United Sates had frequent activities in aluminum industry recently. Although the US Department of Commerce said there was no relevance between anti-dumping and countervailing investigation on China’s aluminum foil and the investigation against Aluminum 232 of national security, those two investigations may both affect the import and export of aluminum foil products significantly and give American aluminum foil industry multiple relief. China will pay high attention to this situation.

Wang emphasized that China urges the US to act prudently and adjudicate fairly so as not to inflict a bad influence on the economic and trade relationship between both countries.