China's steel industry associations will take up cudgels on behalf of producers if the US government launches a probe into whether Chinese mills are dumping steel pipes in the US market, a senior industry official said Thursday.

An official, surnamed Chen, with the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters made the comment to China Daily after seven US steel manufacturers on Wednesday accused Chinese rivals of illegally dumping certain steel products, chiefly pipes, which are used in the extraction oil and gas.

Chen said the petition by American steel mills, including behemoth US Steel Corp, will not only affect steel manufacturers but also trading enterprises if the US government were to impose punitive duties on certain Chinese steel products.

Officials from the China Iron and Steel Association declined to comment on the issue.

Wu Xichun, a senior official with the association, had said at a conference earlier this month that "China's steel industry abides by the rules of the World Trade Organization since it joined the organization and we would never dump steel in any foreign market."

He had attributed the hike in China's steel exports in recent years to strong external demand and the big gap between domestic and foreign prices.

The steel makers' petition to the US Department of Commerce and the US International Trade Commission argues that Chinese steel manufacturers benefit from subsidies for the so-called 'oil country tubular goods', which are then sold in the US market.

"Nearly one-third of the pipe manufacturing organizations we represent are experiencing layoffs," Gary Hubbard, a spokesman for United Steelworkers, a union representing workers at US steel mills, said. "China continues to divert its products to our market, and if we sit back and do nothing we will lose our production capacity."

The petition, he said, seeks "to assure that we will have the jobs when the market bounces back from the current recession".

The union said US steel pipe imports from China have increased from 900,000 tons in 2007 to last year's level of 2.2 million tons, and is worth an estimated $2.7 billion.

Since 2007, the US has launched several anti-dumping and countervailing investigations on some Made-in-China steel products and imposed duties on some, such as circular welded carbon quality steel pipe and light-walled rectangular pipe and tube.

(China Daily April 10, 2009)