Skip to main content

Importers Plead Guilty to Import Scheme in Puerto Rico

Image
By
In last month’s blog we warned those who conspire to circumvent U.S. tariffs on Chinese aluminum extrusions would be caught, prosecuted, and convicted.

According to El Vocero de Puerto Rico, this week importers plead guilty to Federal Judge Francisco Besosa. As part of the plea agreement employers are fined $1,000 and face a forfeiture of $4 million.  Samuel Garcia Adarme, Edrick García Vázquez, Armando García Vázquez, Carlos Minguela and PRP Trading Corporation will be sentenced on December 17. The article goes on to say, “The group was indicted by a Grand Jury on July 20, 2013, together with the companies Screens & Aluminum Industries Sales and Aluwest.  According to the indictment, the conspiracy was for defendants Adarme García and García Vázquez brothers and Minguela Ortiz with assistance from Tang Piu Wong, [to] buy aluminum in China, Malaysia transported, repackaged it and created false invoices to make it appear that the Aluminum was originally from Malaysia and then bring it to Puerto Rico.”

The Aluminum Extruders Council continues to collect information regarding circumvention schemes all across the country.  If you have any information that can be of assistance, let us know. Contact Jeff Henderson at AEC Headquarters.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fair Trade Update: Curtain Wall, Door Thresholds & Vietnam

By
Well, our year is off and running with a bang. Scope issues, Administrative Review, and circumvention top our list in early 2018.

This month we learned that there will be an appeal in the curtain wall scope case.  Permasteelisa and Jangho filed a notice of appeal last week.  It is expected that Yuanda will almost surely file their own notice of appeal by the deadline, which is February 12. The Chinese industry signaled that they would appeal in a recent article in US Glass magazine.   

Additionally, our scope challenge related to door thresholds continues to move forward.  This is a significant case because door thresholds are expressly mentioned as subject merchandise in our trade orders.  So, to lose this application could open the door to many applications clearly covered by our case.  Finally, we continue to await the judges’ (there are more than one judge at the CIT) decision in the appliance handles cases we defended last fall.  We believe we will win.  However, we are mostly i…
Post a Comment
Read more

Heating Up & Settling Down: The Dichotomy of our Trade Case

By
The agenda for our trade case continues to be driven by transshipment/circumvention issues and the 232 Investigation.  Meanwhile, our ‘base case’ is so quiet that we’ve been able to free up budget dollars from the Administrative Review to finance our circumvention case against Vietnam.

The Administrative Review is now complete.  The final rates determined by the Department of Commerce are 86% for countervailing duty (CVD) and 16% for anti-dumping duty (AD).  The total of 102% is our highest rate since we first filed the case.

Scope issues have calmed down a lot.  In fact, only the curtain wall case, the appliance handles case, and door threshold cases are on the front burner.  Reports from the hearing for the curtain wall case were very positive.  The attorney leading that effort, David Spooner, is quite confident we will win this round.  Of course, we fully expect another appeal from the Chinese.  We are awaiting the decision from the judge in the appliance handle cases and believe w…
Post a Comment
Read more

AEC Duties Unchanged; “Trumponomics” Impacts Extruders

By
Our 6th Annual Administrative Review results have been announced.  As previously reported, the Department of Commerce (DOC) maintained extrusion tariffs at 86.01% for our subsidy, or countervailing duty (CVD), case and 20% for our anti-dumping (AD) case.  The combined duty of 106% has been stable since 2016.  This is a good number for the industry, which continues to contain Chinese aluminum extrusion at less than 1% market share. Furthermore, the DOC also assigned the Adverse Facts Available (AFA) rate of 198.61% to the two mandatory respondents, Liaoning Zhongwang Group Co., Ltd. and Liaoyang Zhongwang Aluminum Profile Co. Ltd., which has been the AFA rate since the 5th review.  The 7th Annual Administrative Review has begun with the selection of mandatory respondents. 

Elsewhere in our case, there is nothing new to report on the scope issues we are battling.  We continue to wait for court dates or decisions depending on the matter.  Our trade enforcement actions and results have ma…
Post a Comment
Read more