Ali quartz notice — A measure that would significantly raise duties on many quartz surfaces manufactured in India will not be implemented before the end of the year.
Late last month, the United States International Trade Administration (ITA) extended a review of anti-dumping unfair-trade tariffs on the material until at least January 4th.
The Commerce Department’s division previously stated that a decision would be made in early November, but then pushed back the deadline to December 6.
The review’s preliminary findings, released in July, proposed raising anti-dumping tariffs from single digits to 161.51% for 51 companies and 323.12% for three Indian firms. The action would also impose those duties retroactively on most shipments beginning in December 2019.
The massive increase appears to have occurred after three Indian companies, whose import data is used to track surface-production costs, filed information five hours after a deadline extension. The ITA refused to accept the late information and proposed imposing tariff rates equal to those cited by Cambria Company LLC in its original unfair-trade complaint filed with the United States International Trade Commission against Indian quartz-surface imports in 2019. (USITC).
The ITA memo, dated November 30, and signed by James Maeder, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Operations, stated that “it is not practicable to complete the final results of this by the current deadline,” referring to December 6.
According to Kyle Clahane, International Trade Compliance Analyst, Office III, Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Operations, “the current deadline for the final results of review does not afford Commerce sufficient time to review and properly address the voluminous commentary and complex arguments raised in interested parties’ case briefs, rebuttal briefs, the public hearing, and several meetings with interested parties.”
Public data filings on the case include a call to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo from at least one U.S. representative, as well as letters from ten other U.S. representatives and U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-Virginia).
If the main issue was a five-hour filing delay, the letters urged Raimondo to direct the ITA to set “appropriate rates.”
“Parties making good faith efforts to provide requested information to Commerce should not be penalized for inadvertent errors,” Kaine wrote Raimondo. “My office understands that there is precedent for accepting late responses; for example, in October 2022, Commerce accepted a late filing in a proceeding involving uranium from Russia.”
The anti-dumping tariff represents half of the action taken in 2020 by the USITC, a separate and independent federal agency. The recent review of countervailing (subsidy) activity by the ITA, which was conducted concurrently with anti-dumping, recommended that those single-digit tariffs on Indian quartz surfaces be maintained.
Unfair trade tariffs on Pokarna Engineered Stone Ltd. (PESL), the Quantra manufacturer, are investigated separately. The ITA review proposes a 0% anti-dumping tariff reset for PESL, with no changes to countervailing duties.