While the Aluminum Extruders Council continues its legal battle with Kingtom through the Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA) process, the Department of Commerce (DOC) delivered a disappointing decision in the Reflections scope case.  We will discuss both decisions in this month’s article.  Additionally, imports continue to rebound after a drop during the more intense days of the global pandemic. On May 3, 2021, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) imposed interim measures in our EAPA case against Kingtom.  The interim measures now require “China” duties to be put in place.  The final determination deadline is November 29, 2021.  We will have an opportunity to submit written arguments and rebuttal written arguments in advance of that deadline.  This is a significant win in our mission to stop illegal and unfair trade activities by the Chinese.  It also puts other Chinese-owned operations operating in third countries on notice that the AEC will take all nece...

With the renewal of our trade orders against China a year away, our recent focus in the China case has been on pending scope exclusion requests and reports of transshipment activity. I will briefly discuss those items with you this month. Reflection Window resubmitted its initial scope request on January 9, 2020, in response to the DOC’s supplemental questionnaire of September 23, 2019. Its original request fell under the “finished goods kits” exclusion, and it has resubmitted under that exclusion but indicated that it also intends to submit an exclusion request under the finished merchandise exclusion. We have submitted an extension request for the final determination (currently scheduled for February 24, 2020). This is critical case for our industry. Having won decisively in the curtain wall cases in recent years, now the Chinese are attempting to imitate curtain wall with this hybrid product. We will be watching this case carefully. The AEC is also watching the changes in tariff...

Most of the activity this month related to fair and free trade was external to our ongoing trade cases against China.  Reports of increasing threats to the North American market from other countries continue to grow, and there is clear uncertainty about the impacts of the 232 tariff exemptions for Canada and Mexico on the U.S. industry.  I’ll come back to that in a minute, but first, let me catch you up on issues that did involve our China case. The 8 th Annual Administrative Review is now underway.  Having virtually no opposition from the Chinese industry in either our Anti-Dumping (AD) or Countervailing Duty (CVD) cases, we have withdrawn most of our efforts.  Instead, we will be focus on individual Chinese exporters whose duties we think we can cause to be increased.  This is an efficient use of our resources and similar to the strategy we’ve deployed in recent administrative reviews.  As a result, we expect the base rates to stay the same, which a...

I want to thank everyone who attended our breakout session about the rising threat from imported aluminum extrusions.  In that session we examined the data in this matter.  There has been clear growth in imports from a variety of countries. In recent years we’ve seen higher market penetration from Vietnam and Malaysia, but now, we see the threat from the Caribbean and other Southeast Asian countries.  As discussed in the meeting, the AEC’s law firm in our China case, Wiley Rein, is collecting data from AEC members in order to track these imports and the impacts on our businesses and industry.  If you’d like to participate in this data collection, please contact me for details. While I can’t comment in this forum on about our next steps, let me assure you that we are acting.   Imports from the Dominican Republic are particularly worrisome.   The Chinese owned and operated facility in that country appear to signal a new tactic by the Chinese industry....

This month we received two terrific decisions out of Washington D.C.  The first was the report by the Wall Street Journal that Liu Zhongtian, founder of China ZhongWang, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that he evaded nearly $2 billion in tariffs as part of a conspiracy to smuggle massive quantities of aluminum into the U.S.  The second was the final decision being made in our circumvention case against Vietnam. First, Mr. Liu.  The AEC has been in a state of conflict with ZhongWang (ZW) since before we won our case.  ZhongWang and its affiliates were the number one exporter of aluminum extrusions into the U.S. prior to our filing.  Reports indicate that anywhere from 65-85% of all extrusions dumped into the U.S. from 2008-2010 were from ZW or its business affiliates.  Many of us will remember Peng Cheng, as one example.  Then the AEC exposed the perplexing mountain of extrusions produced in China and shipped to the Mexican d...

This month we will cover the latest developments in open matters within our case.   Appeals and scope requests dominated our attention. Three appeals were filed this month.   The first is the Perfectus/Pallet case.   Perfectus has appealed their loss at the Court of International Trade (CIT).   We will work with the government in this matter to secure victory at the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.   In the Tai-Ao 5050 case, the CIT sided with the Department of Commerce (DOC) in their decision that 5050 alloys are covered by our orders.   Now Tai-Ao has appealed this decision to the CAFC.   We will work with the government on this case as well.   Finally, the CIT is asking the CAFC to reject Jangho’s case.   In light of the losses suffered by Yulanda in their scope cases, the CIT is asking the CAFC not to waste its time on this pointless appeal.   I will keep you posted on these important cases. We’ve als...