Commerce to strengthen AD/CVD oversight

Commerce to strengthen AD/CVD oversight    The U.S. Commerce Department's International Trade Administration (ITA) on Thursday announced a list of 14 proposals it says would strengthen the administration of the nation's antidumping and countervailing duty laws.
   Antidumping (AD) duties are levied on foreign firms that are investigated and found to sell their products in the United States at prices below their home market price or cost of production and cause injury to domestic industry. Countervailing (CVD) duties are imposed after a similar investigation determines that imports into the United States have been unfairly subsidized by foreign governments and are injuring domestic producers.
   The ITA's proposed AD/CVD measures include:
   ' Expanding use of random sampling to select companies as individual respondents in AD investigations and reviews rather than choosing the largest exporters.
   ' Strengthening Commerce's practice regarding the issuance of company-specific AD rates in non-market economy cases.
   ' Clarifying the department's current non-market economy practice, that when it uses import prices for valuing a production factor, those prices should include all applicable freight and handling costs.
   ' Clarifying Commerce's non-market economy practice to require companies to report production inputs for all products produced at each of their facilities — not just those facilities that produced merchandise destined for the United States — for use in the department's non-market economy dumping calculations.
   ' Clarifying the department's current CVD practice to reiterate that Commerce considers state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as constituting a 'specific' group when they are alleged to be receiving countervailable subsidies from the government.
   ' Reconsidering the treatment of export taxes and value-added taxes (VAT) in Commerce's non-market economy AD methodology.
   ' Strengthening the treatment of resellers and other non-reviewed parties in non-market economy cases to ensure that such parties pay the full amount of AD duties.
   ' Adopting a new methodology for valuing wage (labor) rates in non-market economy cases by using surrogate wage rates that fully capture all labor costs (including benefits and taxes paid to workers by their employers) in the non-market economy country.
   ' Eliminating the practice of allowing individual companies to seek removal from an AD or CVD order based on their ability to show zero dumping margins or subsidy rates for three (AD) or five (CVD) consecutive years.
   ' Tightening the rules in non-market economy cases for determining when the price of production inputs purchased from market economy countries will be substituted for the department's standard valuation for these inputs.
   ' Considering whether importers will be required to post cash deposits rather than bonds for imports that fall within the scope of an AD/CVD investigation starting with the issuance of Commerce's preliminary determination (rather than following the imposition of an AD/CVD order).
   ' Strengthening the certification process for the submission of factual information to the department.
   ' Strengthening the accountability of attorneys and non-attorneys practicing before Commerce.
   ' Tightening the deadlines for submitting new factual information in AD/CVD cases.
   U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said the proposed measures — especially focused on illegal import practices from non-market economies — will strengthen trade enforcement and help keep U.S companies competitive. These steps support President Obama's National Export Initiative, which aims to double exports in the next five years, he said.
   Commerce's ITA supports this initiative by enforcing the U.S. AD/CVD laws, which provide U.S. industries and workers with a reliable and transparent mechanism to seek relief from unfair trade practices that hinder their competitiveness in the U.S. market and abroad, Locke noted.      
   Under the Obama administration, ITA continues to step up its enforcement of U.S. trade laws. In 2009, ITA's Import Administration initiated 34 antidumping and countervailing duty investigations compared to 19 the previous year, an increase of 79 percent. Cases against non-market economies comprise roughly one-third of the Import Administration's caseload.
   In the coming months, Locke said the department would conduct a 'transparent review' of these proposals and seek public comment through a comprehensive stakeholder process. The process for introducing these proposed changes will begin this fall. ' Chris Gillis