China opens anti-dumping probe into EU days before Beijing trade talks

China announced an anti-dumping investigation into EU exports of p-nitrotoluene, a chemical, on October 3, claiming it is being sold in the Chinese market at artificially low prices. The move comes days before EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič travels to Beijing on October 8-9 for negotiations, and after the EU opened its own investigation into Chinese PVC imports in September; the EU's trade deficit with China now runs at roughly one billion euros a day. Šefčovič has warned that without concrete results from the Beijing talks, pressure will build for “harsher measures” ahead of an EU summit in Brussels on October 15-16.

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