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Chile’s sole metal mill has stated it can shut down within the face of competitors from low cost Chinese language imports, in a blow to the nation’s authorities, which had imposed tariffs on China earlier this yr in a bid to put it aside.
Chilean steelmaker CAP, which runs the Huachipato mill in Chile’s central Bio Bio area, stated on Wednesday that it will shutter its steel operations “indefinitely” by September, blaming an inflow of imports from China for greater than $500mn in losses over the previous two years.
Chilean officers think about Huachipato, a giant provider of metal supplies to Chile’s huge copper mining trade, to be strategically vital. The plant employs roughly 20,000 folks, instantly and not directly, in Bio Bio.
“This can be a very devastating choice for the Bio Bio area, and the nation is aware of that we as a authorities have made an amazing effort to reverse it,” economic system minister Nicolás Grau stated on Wednesday.
China is Chile’s primary buying and selling companion, accounting for nearly 40 per cent of its exports — one of many largest shares amongst Latin American international locations.
Governments throughout Latin America and Asia have complained of a surge in low cost exports in lots of sectors from China over the previous two years because the world’s second-largest economic system struggles with weaker home demand.
Latin American metal trade group Alacero stated the area imported a report 10mn tonnes of Chinese language metal in 2023 — a 44 per cent enhance from 2022.
Huachipato briefly suspended operations in March, citing the affect from Chinese language imports. Chile’s authorities later slapped non permanent duties of 34 per cent on metal balls from China and 25 per cent on the bars used to make them for six months. Officers stated they might be prolonged pending the outcomes of an ongoing anti-dumping investigation by Chile’s Anti-Worth Distortion Fee.
In June China’s ambassador in Santiago instructed Chilean media that the tariffs had “harmed the professional pursuits of Chinese language metal corporations” and “broken the financial and business relationship” between the 2 international locations.
However CAP, which additionally mines iron ore in Chile, stated on Wednesday that market situations had meant it was unable to extend metal costs regardless of the tariffs, “making it economically unviable to proceed with the metal enterprise in Chile in its present type”.
Grau labelled the choice to close the plant as “irresponsible”, blaming CAP and native metal ball producer Molycop for failing “to achieve an settlement on gross sales and pricing that they may have carried out given the brand new market situations generated by the tariffs”.
He added that the federal government would “proceed making all [possible] efforts to reverse this choice”.
