In July of this year, following the request from the national steelmaker Aceros Arequipa, Peru's National Institute for the Defense of Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property (Indecopi by its Spanish abbreviation) imposed a provisional anti-dumping duty of US$64.6/ton against Chinese imports of wire rod with a diameter between 5.5 and 16 mm.

Since then, workers and representatives of the national wire rod industry network have claimed that the measure puts more than 20,000 jobs at risk and therefore protested on October 9 at Indecopi's headquarters in Lima.

The group of protesters argued that the provisional duty reduces the country's ability to compete in the domestic market and limits exports. Furthermore, at the moment, practically 98% of the raw material used in Peru is imported, so Aceros Arequipa cannot guarantee full coverage of the national market.