The American Institute for International Steel welcomed the Department of Commerce's statement that proposes to eliminate its practice of zeroing in anti-dumping administrative reviews in a December 28th notice in the Federal Register. In 2007, in response to a WTO dispute which the US lost, DOC terminated the practice for new anti-dumping investigations but continued to use zeroing to inflate dumping margins in administrative reviews.

'AIIS has long supported the elimination of the practice of zeroing and is pleased that, after more than a dozen WTO decisions against the US for using zeroing, Commerce has stated that it finally will take the step of abandoning this irresponsible practice.'' AIIS believes that when dumping is alleged, calculations to determine margins should fully take into consideration and treat equally, all sales of the subject product.' Zeroing inflates margins by 'zeroing' out those sales above normal value, creating unfairly inflated margins, said David Phelps, president, AIIS.

'This language proposed by DOC also ' once suitably revised to ensure it completely eliminates zeroing and is adopted -- should forestall the inevitable retaliation against US exports that the WTO will approve absent the elimination of zeroing.' Exports are of growing importance not only to the steel industry, but many manufacturing customers; it is therefore gratifying that Commerce has finally proposed the end of this practice. 'Clearly, if the US continued to use zeroing, the retaliation against US exports would negatively impact the ability of the US private sector to reach the export goals announced by President Obama.,' said Phelps.

'AIIS will be working with other like-minded groups, including CITAC, to assure that the final regulations accomplish the goal of eliminating zeroing as proposed in the December Federal Register notice,' concluded Phelps.