Union representing U.S. tire workers confident WTO investigation will uphold Chinese tire tariffs

Tariffs imposed by the Obama administration on tires imported from China are under review by the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The United Steel Workers union (USW), which represents some 30,000 tire workers in the U.S. and has long advocated the imposition of tariffs to ostensibly protect American jobs in the industry, is confident that the fee structure will be upheld by a WTO “dispute panel.”

“The USW has complete faith that the decision of the President following the extensive investigation by the U.S. International Trade Commission (conducted last year) will be found to be consistent with the U.S. rights under the WTO – specifically, the special safeguard that China agreed to as part of its accession process,” says Leo W. Gerard, the union’s international president.

“While trading nations have the right to challenge any action of their trading partners, it is unfortunate that China has challenged a matter that flows from a provision in the protocol of accession that was critical to the U.S.’ willingness to accept China’s membership despite the long road China had – and continues to have – to bring its system fully into compliance with WTO requirements and norms,” he asserts.

“We expect the U.S. will defend its decision vigorously and that U.S. action will be affirmed as fully consistent with U.S. rights and obligations,” according to Gerard.

The Tire Industry Association (TIA) has expressed opposition to the tariffs, calling them “politically motivated” and contending that the decision “will most likely result in the loss of thousands of retail tire industry jobs here in the U.S., affecting everyone from the shop that services your tire to the tire wholesalers – many of whom are small businesspeople struggling to stay afloat in this economy.”

As the tariff issue was being debated, TIA Executive Vice President Roy Littlefield noted how “the tire manufacturers made the decision years ago to shift production of these lower-cost tires out of the U.S. All this action will do is force the tire manufacturers to shift production of these lower-cost tires to other countries, such as Brazil and India. The bottom line here is that despite what the union and the President believes, these jobs are not coming back, and now we can expect more job losses here in our already struggling economy.”

Littlefield said retaining the tariffs “would be the worst of both worlds – no U.S. manufacturing jobs would be either saved or created, and consumers would be denied a source of affordable tires at a time in our economy when every penny counts.”

He further insisted that “any reduction in the quantity of tires imported from China would be in and of itself disruptive, as no manufacturing uptick here in the U.S. would satisfy the shortage this measure would create. Instead, manufacturers would have to essentially ration their products, thus resulting in shortages, outages, and most likely, much higher tire prices.”

It is not yet known when the WTO will issue a ruling on the dispute.

For more information, visit www.tireindustry.org and www.usw.org.