European Union officials have revealed that in the past two years, a large influx of cheap chemicals from China has led to a sharp increase in anti-dumping complaints filed by European chemical companies in Brussels, setting a new record.
According to the Financial Times on Wednesday, from 2018 to 2020, the EU initiated only one relevant anti-dumping investigation each year. However, in 2024 and 2025, this number increased to 12 investigations per year, totaling 24 anti-dumping investigations over the past two years.
Among them, chemical anti-dumping cases accounted for nearly half of all new trade defense cases. The investigations cover key raw materials such as 1,4-Butanediol (BDO) used in plastics manufacturing and adipic acid needed for producing nylon and pharmaceuticals. Currently, there are at least 26 complaints awaiting investigation.
The surge in anti-dumping complaints is attributed to the bursting of the real estate bubble in China. The downturn in the Chinese property market has severely hit domestic demand for housing and home goods, leading many companies that were previously supplying the construction industry to turn to overseas dumping of excess products.
A senior EU official explained to the Financial Times that China has a large number of “zombie companies” that have not been cleared out. Meanwhile, with Trump’s tariff policies continuing to block the U.S. market, Chinese chemicals that used to be sold to the U.S. and some American chemicals that used to be sold to China are now flooding into the European market.
Marco Mensink, Director General of the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic), expressed that the inundation of cheap Chinese products, coupled with rising energy costs and excessive government regulation, has pushed the European chemical industry to the “brink of collapse.”
He pointed out that in the past three years, the industry has closed about 7% of its capacity, with the rate of closures doubling each year. Some European chemical producers are down to their last factory for certain chemicals, such as lysine, and the EU is now unable to produce raw materials for drugs like paracetamol.
Ineos, a chemical giant owned by British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, submitted 10 anti-dumping complaints in just one month last November, reflecting the high level of urgency within the EU industry regarding the influx of cheap Chinese chemicals.
In response to industry pressure, the European Commission has implemented several measures. One of them involves monitoring import data during anti-dumping investigations to enable retroactive collection of taxes in the future, leading to a significant decrease in import volumes.
The European Commission is also evaluating legislative measures to cover a wider range of product categories and streamline the current evidence-gathering process.
As a concrete step, the European Commission imposed final anti-dumping duties ranging from 29.1% to 42.3% on adipic acid imported from China. The investigation revealed that the EU imports approximately €160 million worth of adipic acid annually, with over 80%, around €130 million, coming from China. The EU adipic acid industry is mainly concentrated in Germany, France, and Italy, employing over 1,100 workers.
An EU official emphasized that chemicals, like metals, are the infrastructure of the economy, and the EU must maintain a certain level of independent production capacity to prevent critical raw material dependence on China.
Cefic has sent a letter to the European Commission requesting the hiring of 20 additional personnel to handle anti-dumping cases to address the current backlog and urging more proactive use of existing trade tools.
However, James Webber, head of the chemical and industrial industries at A&O Shearman, warned that anti-dumping measures are a “double-edged sword.”
He noted that while tariffs may benefit producers in Northwestern Europe, consumers in countries like Portugal may end up paying higher prices for plastic bottles and polyester products, leading to increased inflation and unequal distribution of anti-dumping benefits.