On June 01, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) announced a statement to launch an anti-dumping case into U.S. and Russian imports of oriented electrical steel. An anti-subsidies investigation was also launched into imports of oriented electrical steel from the United States the same day. 

　　The investigations were proposed by WISCO and Baosteel on behalf of domestic oriented electrical steelmakers. After verifying conditions for case filing, MOC decided to start probes into the two cases in line with trade laws.

　　According to sources, in recent years, U.S. and Russian imports of oriented electrical steel increased enormously with price hundreds US Dollars lower than Chinese market price, which has distorted the normal silicon steel market price seriously. The low price imports flooding into China makes WISCO impacted greatly: inventories of oriented silicon steel piles up significantly, ex-work price decreases continuously, the production line with huge investments is still out of fully production and existing capacity can not be fully utilized too. Seeing through the dumping behaviors by U.S. and Russian, it is clear that the two countries are counting on exporting grain-oriented electrical steel as mainly sale means for the capacities are much more than their domestic demands. In 2005 during the same period, EU levied countervailing duties on U.S. and Russian imports of grain-oriented electrical steel, resulting in the exports to Europe curbed obviously and transferred to China. Based on the AISI (America Iron and Steel Institute) report, American steel industry has got generous subsidies from the government in the past 7 years. Under this situation, lots of unfair trade affairs at below-market values from U.S. and Russian steelmakers have hurt Chinese oriented electrical steel industry practically and also hindered global steel industry’s healthy development.

　　To protect Chinese mills' legal rights and interests as well as facilitate a fair and orderly competitive environment for domestic oriented silicon steel market, Wuhan Iron and Steel Group Corporation filed an application to MOC on anti-dumping and anti-subsidies investigation into US imports and anti-dumping investigation into Russian imports. It is the first time for China to conduct anti-dumping and anti-subsidies investigation on steel imports simultaneously, and for WISCO, it is the second time to be the first to maintain its own legitimate interests by means of WTO rules. Since the cases have been launched by MOC, relative departments will keep close watch on imports of oriented silicon steel and be ready to file retrospective taxation application in case of any abnormal situation.