NEWS STORY : Government Accepts TRA’s Call for Anti-Dumping Duties on Chinese Excavators to Protect UK Industry
STORY
The Secretary of State for Business and Trade has formally accepted the Trade Remedies Authority’s (TRA) recommendation to impose definitive anti-dumping and countervailing duties on imports of Chinese excavators, in a bid to shield UK manufacturers from unfairly low-priced competition. Under the measures, anti-dumping duties will range between 18.81% for a sampled exporter and 40.08% for the residual rate, while countervailing duties to offset state subsidies will span from 0% up to 2.98%. The TRA estimates these tariffs could bolster domestic excavator producers by as much as £26 million annually.
The duties target imports of excavators weighing between 11 and 80 tonnes—machines for which the TRA found there is an established UK industry—while exempting larger models, as no home-grown production exists for excavators over 80 tonnes. The investigation, launched in November 2023 following an application by Staffordshire-based manufacturer JCB, concluded that Chinese exporters were leveraging artificially low production costs to undercut UK rivals on price.
In February, Caterpillar (Xuzhou) Ltd. sought judicial review of the TRA’s provisional measures, challenging both the authority’s and the Department of Business and Trade’s decisions. On 9 May, the High Court dismissed the claims as “unarguable,” confirming the TRA acted lawfully, rationally and with procedural fairness—paving the way for the duties to come into effect without further delay. The TRA’s intervention sets a precedent for robust defence of UK heavy-machinery sectors against injurious dumping and unfair subsidy practices, and signals the government’s readiness to deploy trade remedies where domestic industries face significant risk.
