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Syrah Resources (ASX:SYR) came out with a bit of slightly unusual news on Thursday – it’s asked the U.S. government to investigate whether China’s unfairly dumping graphite into the State-side market.
That it wants the Department of Commerce to look into this for them is a statement to the notoriously opaque pricing for the ‘forgotten battery metal’ in the first place.
It’s not just Syrah either. The company has teamed up with “several North American graphite companies” to request an investigation from both the DoC and the International Trade Commission.
Specifically, the consortium (of sorts) is looking for proof that China is deliberately flooding the market with cheap graphite anode material.
An “investigation may result in the US Government imposing additional tariffs on Chinese graphite [anode] products if unfair pricing is confirmed,” Syrah wrote on Thursday.
Existing tariffs on select Chinese graphite products reaffirmed by the US Trade Representative, Syrah wrote, can be absorbed by those Chinese entities should they sell below the cost of production – which “further distorts the market.”
(Worth noting here is the market is hard to distort, given it’s incredibly hard to ascertain what a benchmark price for graphite may actually be.)
At any rate, the company expects an ITC investigation to be conducted into whether or not the American graphite industry has been harmed by alleged dumping practices.
Worth noting also is that China’s having its own problems right now stimulating internal demand – but all in all, another metallico-political flashpoint ahead of the Trump 2.0 Administration.
SYR last traded at 18cps.
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