The US Department of Commerce announced its preliminary determinations that imports of grain oriented electrical steel from China, the Czech Republic, Germany, Japan, Poland, Russia and South Korea are being sold at less than fair value (or dumped) in the United States. As a result, the Commerce Department will instruct US Customs and Border Protection to begin requiring US importers of GOES from these seven countries to deposit estimated antidumping duties at the time of importation.

The Commerce Department's determinations follow the filing, on September 18th 2013, of antidumping and countervailing duty petitions by domestic GOES producers AK Steel Corporation and Allegheny Ludlum, LLC d/b/a ATI Flat Rolled Products, an Allegheny Technologies company as well as the United Steelworkers which represents workers engaged in the production of GOES at ATI Flat Rolled Products. The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America which represents workers engaged in the production of GOES at AK Steel Corporation, subsequently expressed its support for the petitions.

On March 5th 2014, the Commerce Department announced its preliminary determination that imports of GOES from China benefit from subsidies bestowed by the Government of China, resulting in a preliminary countervailing duty margin of 49.15% of the value of the imported steel.

Mr Richard J Harshman chairman, president and CEO of ATI said that "We are pleased that these cases have taken another major step forward. GOES is essential to the integrity and efficiency of the US electrical energy distribution grid. The findings by the Department of Commerce support our belief that the respondent foreign producers have been violating US trade laws and WTO rules with their commercial practices."

Mr James L Wainscott chairman, president and CEO of AK Steel said that "AK Steel applauds the Commerce Department's preliminary ruling that imports of grain-oriented electrical steel are being dumped into the United States. These determinations are an important step in ensuring that our foreign competitors play by the rules of fair trade."

Mr Leo W Gerard International president of the United Steelworkers said that "The USW appreciates the decision by the Commerce Department which ultimately will help save the hundreds of family supportive jobs in this important American industry."

Mr David A Hartquist of Kelley, Drye & Warren LLP counsel to the domestic industry said that "We are very pleased with the Commerce Department's affirmative preliminary determination that producers of grain oriented electrical steel in China, the Czech Republic, Germany, Japan, Poland, Russia, and South Korea are selling their merchandise in the United States at significant dumping margins. The US grain oriented electrical steel industry has suffered lost sales and reduced profitability due to unfairly traded imports from these countries, and relief is needed to counteract the significant injury that is being caused by the unfairly traded imports."