Following complaints by a Chinese steel business about foreign dumping in Chinese markets, China's Commerce Ministry will be launching an anti-dumping probe against Japan, the European Union, and South Korea.

The Commerce Ministry for China says that it will be launching an anti-dumping investigation into imports of stainless steel billet and hot-rolled stainless steel plate products from the EU, Japan, South Korea, as well as Indonesia. Imports into China of underpriced metals products has been on the rise, and may have been exacerbated by the US' recent imposition of broad-based steel and aluminum tariffs, jarring global metals markets.

By launching an anti-dumping investigation, China is paving the way to begin enacting their own sets of targeted metals tariffs on justified evidence, allowing them to further restrict the movement of metals products across their borders and further hampering the flow of cheap products to the US, squeezing already-choked supply lines into the US materials-based industries.