Law360, New York (February 28, 2014, 4:07 PM ET) -- The U.S. International Trade Commission on Friday voted to keep in place 5-year-old import duties on Chinese laminated woven sacks after determining that removing the remedial tariffs would likely damage the business interests of U.S. producers.
In a 5-0 vote, with one commissioner abstaining, the ITC found that if the anti-dumping and countervailing duty orders were revoked, then producers of woven sacks in the U.S. likely would be injured within a “reasonably foreseeable time.” The vote brings to a close the commission's five-year sunset review of the tariffs, which began last summer.
“As a result of the Commission's affirmative determinations, the existing orders on imports of these products from China will remain in place,” the ITC said in a brief statement.
The vote from the commission comes after a pair of decisions in a parallel investigation from the U.S. Department of Commerce, which determined last fall that illegal dumping and subsidization of the sacks was still occurring after five years.
The laminated woven sacks at issue consist of fabric laminated with polypropylene. They are typically used for retail packaging of consumer goods such as pet foods and bird seed.
In its own probe, Commerce adjusted the dumping margins down a bit, scaling back from a range of 64 percent to 91 percent in the original investigation to between 20 percent and 47 percent upon review. The department also upped the subsidy rates for each of the five named Chinese shippers, landing at rates ranging from 83 percent up to 406 percent.
The ITC and Commerce conducted expedited sunset reviews, after foreign producers subject to the duties did not provide an adequate level of response to the agencies’ requests for input, according to the agencies.
In an expedited review, the ITC generally dispenses with the public hearings it would hold and questionnaires it would issue as part of a full review and instead relies on available information and data collected by the staff, responses that are submitted by domestic and foreign companies in a given industry and information from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the ITC said.
The woven sacks case has been a lightning rod for litigation ever since the duties were first implemented in 2008. Most recently, the Federal Circuit determined that Commerce had the right to disregard information it can't verify while reviewing anti-dumping duty orders, affirming the application of a China-wide 91.73 percent dumping margin.
But the case has also drawn legal jabs from domestic producers. In 2010, the Laminated Woven Sacks Committee, a domestic coalition, came up short in its bid to widen the scope of the duty orders at the U.S. Court of International Trade.
Domestic producers have also lobbed administrative challenges before Commerce, asserting that some Chinese companies are evading the tariffs, which was an offshoot of the initial fight over scope.
Counsel information for the parties was not immediately available Friday.
The case is Laminated Woven Sacks from China, investigation numbers 701-TA-450 and 731-TA-1122, in the U.S. International Trade Commission.
--Editing by Richard McVay.
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