P.M. BRIEFING : Smith Corona Asks Import Relief

NEW YORK — Smith Corona Corp. said today it has filed an anti-dumping petition seeking relief from unfairly low-priced imports of personal word processors from Japan.

In its petition, filed late Tuesday with the U.S. Department of Commerce, Smith Corona estimated that major Japanese producers including Brother and Panasonic have been selling their products at more than 30% below their fair market price over the last year.

The Smith Corona petition was filed on the basis of a decision by the department last Friday. That ruling said the fact that personal word processors were built by adding a screen and a disk drive to a typewriter did not exclude those machines from the anti-dumping duty order already in place against Japanese-made typewriters.