India Tile Tariff Decision Heads to Court
NDERSON, S.C. — The decision against imposing anti-dumping tariffs on ceramic tile from India is being challenged in federal court.
The Coalition for Fair Trade in Ceramic Tile (CFTCT) filed an appeal today with the U.S. Court of International Trade over the federal Department of Commerce advising that ceramic tile from India is not being sold in the United States at less-than-fair-market value.
The CFTCT — a group of nine tile companies with U.S. manufacturing facilities — is also appealing Commerce’s determination of anti-subsidy tariffs, which came in at less than 4% for all producers and exporters of ceramic tile in India.
The CFTCT, will file a complaint detailing the specific points of its appeal in the coming weeks.
The CFTCT had sought tariffs of 400% to 800% on Indian tile in its original unfair-trade complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) last year. The commission agreed in an initial decision that the U.S. industry suffered “material harm.”
Commerce, through its International Trade Administration (ITA), reviewed import data from two large Indian tile companies. The ITA found no below-market U.S. sales and relatively low subsidies by government for manufacture and shipment, and the USITC accepted those determinations in its tariff decision on May 19.
“Frankly, we are sympathetic to the challenges Commerce investigators faced in evaluating Indian exporters of ceramic tile, as we will later detail, with those challenges impacting the investigation,” said Eric Astrachan, executive director of the CFTCT and the Tile Council of North America (TCNA).
“By statute, Commerce is time-limited in its investigation, at a time when we understand more trade remedy actions have been launched than at any time in Commerce’s history since the Tariff Act of 1930 became law, he added, “Hopefully, our appeal will give Commerce the time it needs to reevaluate the information they received.”
Andrew Whitmire, trade data analyst for the Tile Council of North America (TCNA), noted that “the prices we are tracking on imports from India defy credulity and can be deeply injurious to American ceramic tile manufacturing and the many thousands of families that rely on their good jobs at U.S. tile facilities.”