Wheatland Tube is asking the U.S. Department of Commerce to investigate whether or not hot rolled steel made in India and turned into circular welded pipe in Oman and the United Arab Emirates is in violation of an existing anti-dumping order on the pipe from India.

Headquartered in Wheatland, Pennsylvania, Wheatland Tube has plants in Warren, Ohio, and Chicago.

Circular Welded pipe, also referred to as standard pipe, are used in plumbing and heating, air conditioning, automatic sprinkler, and fencing systems.

According to Wheatland Tube parent Company Zekelman Industries, Indian producers and exporters have been shipping increasing volumes of hot-rolled steel to Oman and the UAE to be processed into the standard pipe in those countries and avoid paying the high anti-dumping duties in place on imports of the pipe products from India.

U.S. imports of standard pipe from Oman and the UAE have increased by roughly 35 percent - from 389,477 metric tons in the four-year period from 2013 to 2016 to 525,412 metric tons in the four-year period from 2017 to 2020, according to Zekelman. During the same period, exports of hot-rolled steel from India into Oman and the UAE have also increased.

The request seeks a ruling that Indian hot-rolled steel that is processed into CWP in Oman and the UAE constitutes merchandise "completed or assembled" in those countries for purposes of circumvention of the India CWP order under U.S. law.

If the Commerce Department issues an affirmative ruling, the antidumping duties now applicable to CWP from India would apply to imports of the merchandise from Oman and the UAE. The anti-dumping duty rates on CWP from India range from nearly 12 percent to more than 87 percent.

"Massive volumes of imports of CWP made from Indian hot-rolled steel have been coming into the United States, and these imports have been displacing U.S.-made products and causing negative effects on employment and sales," said Barry Zekelman, CEO at Zekelman Industries. "Today we are taking this action to ensure that unfairly traded products do not take jobs from American workers or harm U.S. companies. Zekelman intends to vigorously pursue all circumvention related to tubular products."

Zekelman Industries is the largest steel pipe and tube producer in North America, with nearly 3,000 employees in the United States and plants in nine states.