India held public hearing on Chinese TBR tires anti-dumping investigation

The public hearing on the Truck and Bus Radial Tyres anti-dumping investigation was held at the DGAD on March 28, 2017. The discussion was on the injury and causal link determination.

In the hearing, Chinese tyre industry make the following arguments.

1.       The Indian domestic industry does not suffer any injury

Chinese tyre industry claimed that the positive economic performance of the Indian domestic industry clearly shows that it does not suffer any injury. Chinese tyre industry highlighted the followings for the period 2012-13 to December 2015:

-          The production of TBR has increased by 60%;

-          The sales of TBR have increased by 64%;

-          Investments of 3.5 billion USD have been made;

-          The TBR production capacity has increased by 26%

-          The capacity utilization has increased from 75% to 95%;

-          The number of employees in the TBR production has increased by 43%;

-          Last but not least, the domestic industry is making profit on TBR sales and the profit has increased by an outstanding 817%.

Chinese tyre industry submitted several press articles showing the excellent performance of the domestic.

2.  The Indian domestic industry does not suffer any threat of injury

Chinese tyre industry referred to the interpretation of the treat of injury given by the WTO and of the EU Court of Justice to demonstrate that the domestic industry does not suffer any threat of injury. All the economic factors of the domestic industry are positive and the domestic industry is in a situation of strength and not of vulnerability or fragility. Therefore, the domestic industry does not face any threat of injury.

3. Absence of causal link

Chinese tyre industry claimed that the imports of TBR from China did not cause the alleged injury. Rather, we contended that other elements have caused the alleged injury suffered by the domestic industry such as:

-   The Indian tyre manufacturers invested in the biased tyre technology instead of radial tyre technology. For a long time, Indian producers only focussed on biased tyres and they have only recently decided to invest in radial tyre technology despite the growing demand for TBR.

-   The domestic industry imports raw materials at high price because of the hefty customs duty levied on natural rubber.

The domestic industry did not reflect the raw materials price decrease in its selling price while Chinese producers have lowered their selling prices due to the drop in raw materials prices.

Imports originating in China only account for 5.5% of the total consumption of truck and bus tyres (bias and radial) in India. It is therefore unlikely that the imports are causing the alleged injury suffered by the domestic industry.

- The pricing policy adopted by the domestic industry is causing the alleged injury. The domestic industry is selling at low prices on the OEM market and sells on the replacement market at high price in order to compensate for the loss occurred on the OEM market.