Rockwell International Corp., the only U.S. manufacturer of large newspaper printing presses, has won the first round of its anti-dumping petition against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and three other Japanese and German press makers.
Rockwell charged in its petition that Mitsubishi had won a recent sale at The Washington Post (May/June TechNews, p. 16) by selling its presses at substantially below fair market value. On Aug. 14, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled by a vote of 6-0 that U.S. industry is possibly being injured by such actions, and that there is cause for an investigation. The U.S. Commerce Department will conduct the investigation, which could take about a year.
Rockwell is seeking anti-dumping duties of 165 percent against Mitsubishi and 67 percent against German manufacturer MAN Roland Inc. Tokyo Kikai Seisakusho Ltd. and the Koenig & Bauer-Albert Group are also named in the petition.
"It hurts us and America's high-technology industrial base when we lose the largest single sale for the next several years, The Washington Post, to a foreign producer that has quoted prices at substantially below its cost of production," said Robert Swift, president of Rockwell Graphic Systems, the press-making subsidiary of Rockwell International.
In a release issued Aug. 17, TKS stated that it had sold only press add-ons during the period in question and therefore should not have been included in the proceedings.
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