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Enforcement Issues Dominate the Agenda this Month

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 Defending the AEC orders continues to be a topic that impacts our Administrative Review, scope issues, and EAPA filings.  Also, this month the AEC prepares to engage the Department of Commerce again on the Aluminum 232 and introduces the Aluminum Monitoring System to its members.

We start with our ongoing Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA) cases against Kingtom.  U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) administrative review of our Kingtom EAPA case affirmed its original results, finding substantial evidence that the seven importers subject to the investigation evaded the AD/CVD Orders on Aluminum Extrusions from China.  CBP’s determination relied on several factors, including that Kingtom did not produce merchandise equal to the quantities it was exporting and that Kingtom had strong ties with China, inferring that Kingtom was able to supplement its exports of any aluminum extrusions produced in the Dominican Republic with Chinese extrusions.  CBP stated, “{W}hen looking at the totality of the circumstances regarding evidence of Kingtom’s actual production levels coupled with Kingtom’s affiliations with China, a finding of evasion due to the commingling of Chinese-origin aluminum extrusions with Dominican Republic-origin aluminum extrusions is supported by substantial evidence in the record.”  This finding is very helpful as Kingtom recently filed a Scope Challenge against the AEC stating they should be excluded from all Chinese duties because all their shipments came from local production in the Dominican Republic.  The AEC is actively engaged in this matter and will continue to pursue all legal strategies that force Kingtom to pay the duties in place against China and its entities.

The AEC has filed to appeal the decision in the Reflections Window & Wall case.  This matter was discussed in our recent podcast Episode #16.  We are confident that the precedent established in the courts about final and finished merchandise will lead to a win and reversal of Commerce’s decision.

The AEC is not convinced the Department of Commerce (DOC) understands our reasons for opposing their decision to drop the extrusion tariffs in the aluminum 232.  We have been waiting for appointments in that department to be made by the Biden Administration that we can approach about our position.  The position has been filled and we are preparing a white paper discussing the impacts on our industry by the DOC’s unilateral decision to drop the tariffs.  In addition to the white paper, we will request a meeting for us to discuss this issue in person.  At that point, we may need the members to send another round of letters to their lawmakers to have them support our position.  The data is clear.  Since the DOC dropped the tariffs, imports have risen to their highest level since before we won our China trade case.

Finally, the AEC alerted its members that the new Aluminum Monitoring System has been started by the administration and will take effect on June 28, 2021.  To help members understand the benefits and costs of this program, the AEC produced an interactive webinar in early June.  Robert DeFrancesco with Wiley Law led the discussion and took several questions from the audience.  If you missed that broadcast, you can view it on demand here.  If you have questions about the program, feel free to reach out to staff and we will get them answered.

Thank you for your continued support!  Our agenda is getting longer and without your support we simply could not impact so many issues.  


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