Paper Companies Applaud Congressional Call for Action on Chinese Paper Subsidies
MIAMISBURG, OH—July 28, 2010—Appleton Coated LLC, NewPage Corp., and Sappi Fine Paper North America applauded the efforts of more than 100 members of Congress who wrote to President Obama asking for action on China’s subsidizing of its paper producers.
The letter to the President urges that he “carefully examine the practices employed by the Chinese government to provide its paper industry an artificial and unfair advantage in the U.S. market, and determine the extent to which these practices cause or threaten to cause harm to American producers.” The letter was spurred by the devastating impact that Chinese unfairly-priced paper exports are having on the industry all across the country. Indeed, the letters signatories come from thirty-one states representing more than half of the country.
The letter points to a study recently released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) which highlighted the continuing efforts of the Chinese government to promote the development of its paper producers at almost any expense. The academic study, authored by Dr. Usha Haley, identified roughly $33 billion in subsidies provided to China’s paper producers in a variety of forms that have stimulated enormous capacity increases and jeopardized production and jobs in the U.S.
This study backs up the facts that underlie the trade case that was filed by our companies and the United Steelworkers (USW) union last September. That case alleged that Chinese and Indonesian paper producers benefitted from subsidies and were dumping their products in the U.S. market. At each stage of the government’s review of the cases, the concerns were validated and relief has been authorized.
“We deeply appreciate Congress’ strong interest in the future of the domestic paper industry. While our trade case involves only a subset of the entire industry, it has been deeply injured by China’s unfair trade practices. The letter to the President shows how important it is for our government to act on our case and provide real, effective relief,” stated George Martin, senior vice president, operations of NewPage Corporation.