China-US Trade Frictions: China's steel sector wins in US Section 337 investigation

China-US Trade Frictions: China's steel sector wins in US Section 337 investigation

April 9, 2018, CGTN

Ruixue Ran appeared on CGTN to discuss a recent victory on behalf of China's steel sector following a decision by the ITC to terminate a Section 337 investigation into Chinese steel products. According to Ran, who represented Chinese steel companies including Baosteel in the case, "While defending the trade secret misappropriation claim, we spent massive energy to comb through Baosteel's independent research and development record in the Advanced High Strength Steel products for automobile vehicles, over the last two decades, out of hundreds of thousands of pages of files." She says the antitrust claim was the last to win for the Chinese steel sector and the most difficult one. "The last time a similar antitrust claim went before the ITC was in 1978 against Japanese respondents. While we won the initial determination by the Administrative Law Judge, the Complainant demanded a review. The Commission even held a public hearing to hear oral arguments during the review, which was very rare. And we didn't get the final determination after the review, until this March."