History (1995): New Custom Duties Fixed by European Community Commission for Imported FDDs

New customs duties, from 44% to 52.9%, have been fixed by the European Community Commission on all European imports of 3.5-inch floppy disks shipping from the US, Mexico and Malaysia.

The new tax is the result of an inquiry begun in September 1994 after a complaint filed by a small group of European manufacturers who call themselves DISKMA. The group includes the Belgian firms Sentinel and Supply House, the German maker Boeder along with its subsidiary RPS, and the Italian manufacturer Computer Support.

As is customary, those foreign production houses which cooperated with the commission by furnishing statistical data will be taxed less severely than others.

Together, the 3 countries which are the target of the new policy represent 27% of floppy disk imports in Europe.

Before this, in April 1993, the ECC resolved to impose severe duties on Japan (40.9% surtax), China (41.5%) and Taiwan (33.5%), which led to the closing of a number of factories, particularly in China, or in some cases, moves to other countries.

But the story doesn’t end there. In response to another complaint by DISKMA, a new supplementary investigation has been initiated by the ECC to verify if the 3 countries first affected by the initial wave of surtaxes have been bypassing antidumping regulations by shipping diskettes by way of Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Macao, Malaysia (again), the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 94, published on November 1995.