China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) Thursday expressed a strong protest against a United States preliminary decision to impose duties ranging from 10.9 percent to 30.6 percent on steel pipe imports from China.

The MOC spokesman Yao Jian said in a statement on the MOC website that the Chinese government was "strongly dissatisfied with and resolutely opposed to" the decision made by the US Department of Commerce on Wednesday to levy such a tariff on Chinese steel pipe used in oil and gas drilling.

Yao said the US government did not recognize the objective information provided by the Chinese government, and still stuck to the point that the Chinese government was subsidizing Chinese steel pipe manufacturers.

The US decision did not conform to the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures of the World Trade Organization, Yao said. The way the US defined and worked out the subsidies was wrong, which resulted in higher subsidy rates and would "greatly hurt" the interests of Chinese enterprises.

The Chinese government and industries cannot accept the decision, Yao noted, urging the United States to make a correction in the final ruling.

Yao stressed that the United States should stop new trade protectionism actions before the end of 2010 and resist trade remedy measures as the government promised in the G20 summit in London.

(Xinhua News Agency September 11, 2009)