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

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 we will win.  However, depending on the grounds cited by the judge, we may have a shot of going back to the Department of Commerce (DOC) and asking them to take a fresh look at earlier decisions for excluded products like solar mounting systems and side-mount valves.  The door threshold case is being filed now.  Since door thresholds are explicitly mentioned in our orders, there is very little chance of thresholds being excluded.

The 232 Investigation is coming down to its end game.  We are sending a letter to the DOC stating our remedy and concerns.  We are reaching out to members of Congress to support and circulate a letter stating our positions.  We are targeting the week of December 11 for visits to agencies and elected officials in D.C.

Next year will see the conclusion of the 232, some possible advances in our scope, and a year in which we have peeled back one more layer of the onion on transshipment activity.  I believe members will see real benefit in 2018 from the work that has been underway on scope and trade violations.

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