U.S. engineered wood flooring manufacturers have alleged certain producers in China are performing "targeted dumping," or selling a product in the U.S. at a lower price to certain customers or in certain regions than they do to other customers. The Coalition for American Hardwood Parity (CAHP) made the allegations in a petition to the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) on Tuesday.
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U.S. engineered wood flooring manufacturers have alleged certain producers in China are performing "targeted dumping," or selling a product in the U.S. at a lower price to certain customers or in certain regions than they do to other customers. The Coalition for American Hardwood Parity (CAHP) made the allegations in a petition to the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) on Tuesday.
The new allegation comes in anticipation of a preliminary ruling from DOC in its ongoing antidumping investigation of engineered wood flooring from China. The allegation could result in DOC using a different methodology to determine its antidumping duty, according to a CAHP release.
Jonathan Train, president of the Alliance for Free Choice & Jobs in Flooring (AFCJF), a group opposed to the implementation of antidumping duties, says CAHP's petition is an attempt to "find a backdoor loophole" to permit DOC to use an antidumping duty methodology known as "zeroing." With zeroing, Train said, DOC bases its antidumping duty determination "only on the dumped sales, ignoring the non-dumped sales and excluding non-dumped sales from its averages." In turn, zeroing artificially and inaccurately increases antidumping duties, Train said. He added that zeroing has been largely discredited by the World Trade Organization (WTO), of which the U.S. is a founding member.
Jeff Levin is counsel for CAHP and, citing the attorney-client privilege, would not say whether his organization is pursuing DOC to use zeroing in its antidumping duty determination; however, he did say his group's latest allegations "were filed in full accord with the controlling statute and regulations." He added, "… We trust that the Department of Commerce will employ appropriate and applicable methodologies in its calculations of estimated dumping margins."
The allegations are directed at three manufacturers in China: Zhejiang Layo Industry Co., the Samling Group, and Zhejiang Yuhua Timber Co. These three companies are "mandatory respondents" in the investigation, or the largest manufacturers by volume that sell engineered wood flooring to U.S. importers. It is standard practice that dumping margins calculated for most other Chinese exporters are based on the dumping margin calculated for these mandatory respondents.
A preliminary antidumping duty determination is expected mid-May. In March, DOC assigned a preliminary countervailing duty of 2.25 percent to most engineered wood flooring exporters in China. That duty, however, is paid by U.S. importers of record.
For a complete explanation of both the countervailing duty and antidumping investigations, see the Signs of Life: State of the Industry 2011 article.
The CAHP press release can be viewed below: