Given the Western world’s growing unease about the high-tech challenge posed by China, it’s easy to forget just how extensive the jitters remain about low-tech goods.
The European Union offered a reminder this week by renewing 12-year-old trade protection against China that targets the most mundane of household items: ironing boards. The bloc reimposed tariffs as high as 42.3% for five more years.
The goal is to protect producers in EU countries including Italy and Poland from alleged below-cost — or “dumped” — imports. The European manufacturers, which number 10, are hardly household names; Colombo New Scal and Rorets Polska Spolka are two.
Ironing boards are among a group of more than 50 Chinese products subject to EU anti-dumping duties, making China by far the most frequent target of such European levies. Other Chinese goods that face such import taxes include aluminum foil, ceramic tiles, ring binders and tableware.
Low-tech goods can be a source of fairly high-level frictions between China and the EU. China has a particular gripe about European anti-dumping duties on Chinese bicycles because they’ve been in force since 1993. That didn’t stop the EU from reimposing the levies in August for five more years (or from applying similar five-year duties on Chinese electric bikes for the first time in January).
In the case of ironing boards, the EU said longer anti-dumping measures against China are needed to guard against financial risks to a European industry that makes 5.2 million boards a year and employs fewer than 700 people in total.
Not even the U.K.’s plan to leave the EU on Oct. 31 affected the reasoning of the bloc, which included a British maker of ironing boards — Vale Mill — among a list of three European producers that received “verification visits” during a probe to determine whether the duties should be prolonged.
