First of all I want to thank everyone that attended the Fair Trade sessions during our Virtual Fall Management Conference. It was good to have that chance to discuss the range of issues we face as we look to close out 2020. One thing is certain; if we stick together we will get through this and continue our winning ways in the defense of our trade orders.
I’ll start with the 9th Administrative Review. We are fully engaged in the process at this point. Our attorneys and the Fair Trade Committee have worked together to develop a strategy we believe will keep the current duties in place. With the combined rate at approximately 106%, we have an excellent deterrent. Furthermore, we hope to prosecute our position in a financially beneficial way, thus providing us with funding to go after other scope or circumvention issues. A preliminary decision on both cases could come as early December 2020.
Our scope challenges continue to work their way through the Department of Commerce and the courts. The door threshold case is back in appeal, and the AEC will be defending the threshold industry in this matter. Recently, a lower court judge decided that not all door thresholds are door thresholds as specifically called out in our trade orders. That’s right: our trade orders actually state that door thresholds are covered merchandise. However, this judge disagrees. What is odd about this is that the higher court has already ruled on this specific issue. Nevertheless, we will have to litigate the matter. Having already had a higher court rule in our favor on this key point, confidence is high we will win. Perfectus is challenging the years’ old decision that those fake aluminum pallets were really final finished products. The oral arguments for this case will take place in early October.
Some of you may have seen a report from Bloomberg Law (subscription) recently that stated that Commerce must revisit and possibly lower countervailing duties on some aluminum extrusions imported from China. This has been widely misreported by others so I wanted to set the record straight. This is an appeal to the Court of International Trade (CIT) from the 3rd Administrative Review that had been stayed for over four years. It deals with the subsidy calculation on curtain wall products where we successfully got the Department of Commerce to countervail both the glass and the extrusions in the curtain wall. The CIT said that because the antidumping duties only apply to the extruded portion of the curtain wall you cannot also countervail the glass and the extrusion. We have allowed the Government to take primary responsibility in defending the case. This only affects the countervailing duty rate for the entries from the 3rd Administrative Review and will have no impact on future tariff rate calculations.
On the circumvention front, we expect to hear the final determination in our Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA) case in January 2021. Much of the details of this case remain under wraps as a full investigation is underway. I look forward to announcing a great result on this.
Again, thank you for your participation at our conference, and thank you all for your continued support of these very important issues.
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