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Great Preliminary Decision in Kingtom Case

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 As you have been following for several months now, the AEC has been engaged in several legal battles with Kingtom, the Chinese owned and operated extrusion plant in the Dominican Republic.  To date, three separate EAPA filings have been made, and all have been successful.  Now, the legal arena has moved to our Annual Administrative Review in both our anti-dumping (AD) and subsidy (CVD) cases.  Just last week the Department of Commerce (DOC) issued its preliminary decision in this year’s review.  Commerce issued its preliminary results in the AD case on July 30.  Kingtom, the sole mandatory respondent, received the 86.01% China-wide rate, as did the other 84 companies for which we did not rescind our administrative review request.  In the CVD case, Kingtom and two other companies received the 242.15% China-wide rate, and three companies received the 16.08% ‘all others’ rate.  Until Kingtom can prove to the DOC that all exports from its operation consist of extrusions produced in the Dominican Republic, these rates will apply.  The final decision is expected in December.  If history is any guide, don’t expect this ruling to change between now and the end of the year.

In the last two weeks we have heard of up to three more schemes under way.  While I can’t divulge details, the combined volumes of these three separate operations total over 50 million pounds per year.  All three of these claims have come to the AEC from outsiders.  We are assessing the details and data to develop the legal strategy to address these.  The lesson here is to keep bringing your suspicions to us.  You never know; we may be hearing the same reports from others.  So, your voice helps build the credibility of these claims.

Some of you may be aware that the criminal trial in the fake pallet case has been under way for a couple of weeks.  Here is one report you may find interesting.   It is hard to speculate at this stage how the U.S. government will proceed, assuming they win.  We will be watching this closely in the coming weeks as the verdict is announced.

Next month at the Aluminum Summit I want to be sure you or someone from your company stops into our Fair-Trade Focus Session.  In that session, which will be closed to the media, we will openly discuss what we can about our findings.  We continue to run data on incoming shipments.  So, by conference, we ought to have some items to share.  The key to our success with this is marrying the data with the reality of what’s happening in the market.  That is where you can be helpful.  So, in this meeting we’ll get into the weeds with what we’ve learned and what you know.  At this point, we need to identify targets for investigation that can give us the biggest bang for our buck.  I look forward to seeing you there.

Thank you all for your continued support!  Stay safe!


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