South African manufacturers of truck and bus tyres are the latest target of a Brazilian antidumping investigation against South Africa, following an application by the Brazilian body representing tyre manufacturers, ANIP.

This comes in the wake of another trade probe of South Africa, over allegations of Sasol dumping polypropylene products, launched in March this year. Meanwhile, the tiff between the two Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) members about cheap chicken imports to South Africa has been continuing.

Brazil threatened legal action at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) last year when South Africa’s International Trade Administration Commission investigated the dumping of frozen Brazilian poultry in South Africa and introduced a provisional antidumping duty.

Brazil initiated an antidumping probe on June 10 into imports of new truck and bus tyres from South Africa, Russia and Asian countries, giving importers 40 days to respond. It alleged South Africa’s manufacturers were dumping at a 51.98% discount.

South African Tyre Manufacturers Conference CEO Etienne Human said the claim only recently came to its attention. "The (conference’s) members are in the process of obtaining technical advice on how to deal with the Brazil antidumping application."

An industry expert on Wednesday said Brazil had been "quite aggressive" in protecting its manufacturing industry, and implied that the authorities did not always follow WTO rules diligently on the introduction of trade remedies.

International trade law firm Felsberg & Associates said Brazil had introduced five antidumping investigations within two months at the end of last year, ranging from seamless carbon steel pipe imports from China to tyres from South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and the Ukraine.

Apparently requests by the South African Tyre Manufacturers Conference for discussions with the Brazilian authorities had been unsuccessful.

The tyre antidumping initiation document says that due to the lack of pricing data for the products probed, the normal value for all investigated countries was based on "estimates of production costs, operational expenses and profit margins".

20 June 2013, 05:57

By Amanda Visser

Source: bdlive.co.za