Six steelmakers with major U.S. operations filed a trade complaint on Wednesday seeking punitive tariffs for alleged unfair pricing of imported steel from China, India, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan.

The suit, which concerns a common kind of coated steel used in automobile and construction industries, is the first salvo in the campaign this year by the beleaguered U.S. steel industry to protect itself against a record flood of imports.

The steelmakers are United States Steel Corp., Nucor Corp., Steel Dynamics Inc., ArcelorMittal USA, AK Steel Corp. and California Steel Industries. All are based in the U.S. except ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steelmaker, which is based in Luxembourg and London but owns big mills in Indiana and elsewhere in the country.

The petitioners are frustrated because prices have been sluggish—down about 25% since the start of the year—despite strong demand. That has forced the companies, which make most of their steel near auto factories in the Midwest and South, to lay off thousands of workers and idle plants around the country.

They blame imports, particularly from China. Slowing demand in that country has led its steelmakers to export excess capacity, flooding global markets. Exports of steel from China rose 36% to 30.4 million tons during the first four months of the year.

Imports have "devastated pricing in the U.S. market, increased their share of the U.S. market by undercutting U.S. producers' prices and caused injury to U.S. producers and their workers," lawyers for the six steelmakers said in a statement.

The United States International Trade Commission must decide within 45 days whether the business of U.S. producers was sufficiently "injured" to merit duties. The Department of Commerce will issue a preliminary ruling by the end of 2015. Final rulings by both agencies are due by mid-2016.

The U.S. last year slapped duties on imports of steel used in the energy industry from South Korea and five other countries. Those duties haven't stemmed the tide of shipments.

To win this new case, the U.S. companies will have to prove that the foreign companies sold their steel at below-market prices or benefited from illegal state aid, and that these tactics allowed them to win market share in a way that damaged the profits of domestic steelmakers.

The U.S. isn't the only country to protest higher imports. The European Commission last month passed provisional tariffs on the import of a valued-added steel product called grain-oriented steel electrical steel from China, Russia, the U.S., Japan, and South Korea.

The European Commission also levied provisional tariffs on the import of stainless steel cold rolled sheet from China and Taiwan earlier this year and has launched two separate investigations into the import of two different kinds of steel from China.

"We're having a direct impact from these tonnages which are sold at cut rate prices" into Europe, said Jeroen Vermeij, director of market analysis & economic studies at the European Steel Association, known as Eurofer.

"It is clear that Chinese exports are threatening the long-term viability of the European steel industry," he said.

A concern for American steelmakers is that foreign-produced steel benefits from unfair help from home governments. The petitions filed by U.S. companies identified 48 separate subsidy programs in China, 88 in India, 12 in Italy, 43 in South Korea, and 22 in Taiwan.

Imports of corrosion-resistant steel from the five countries jumped 85% between 2012 and 2014, to 2.75 million tons, the petitioning steelmakers said. In 2014, the five countries exported more than $2.2 billion of corrosion-resistant steel to the U.S., the companies said. Steel company officials from China and other countries have denied unfair trade practices.

Tom Conway, vice president for the United Steelworkers union, which represents workers at ArcelorMittal and U.S. Steel, said he was delighted with the petition for duties. He also suggested taxing "customers who knowingly purchase such illegally priced and dumped products."

Charles Bradford, an analyst at New York-based investment research firm Bradford Research Inc., said the steel companies are expected to argue before the USITC that foreign companies benefit from subsidies from their governments and from currencies that have been intentionally depreciated relative to the dollar. "Currencies are a big deal for the steelmakers," said Mr. Bradford.

"A 20% change in currency rates can make a difference of a $100 for a ton of steel coil," said Mike Lee, plant manager at Nucor's mill in Decatur, Alabama. By comparison, he says, "if we can save 20 cents on operating costs, that's a lot."

Alex MacDonald in London contributed to this article.

Write to John W. Miller at john.miller@wsj.com and Lisa Beilfuss at lisa.beilfuss@wsj.com

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