Crushed-Glass Slabs Remain in China Quartz Tariff
By Emerson Schwartzkopf
WASHINGTON – Slabs made with glass-type sands will remain under the U.S. unfair-trade tariffs on quartz surfaces from China following an April 25 federal court ruling.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that the U.S. Commerce Department didn’t violate procedure in 2019 by expanding the definition of quartz surfaces to include those made with fine-crushed glass powder.
The court turned down an appeal by three U.S. importers and a Chinese manufacturer of a December 2020 lower-court ruling that previously upheld Commerce’s action.
The case dates back to the 2018 complaint filed by U.S. manufacturer Cambria Company LLC at the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) concerning below-market sales of heavily subsidized Chinese-made quartz surfaces in the United States. That federal agency eventually imposed special tariffs of 360%-plus on the Chinese products and shut off all but a trickle of the product into the U.S. market.
The U.S. International Trade Administration – a different federal agency that’s part of the Commerce Department – investigated Cambria’s complaint. In February 2019, Commerce agreed – at Cambria’s request – to widen the scope to include slabs made with finely-crushed glass powders.
Cambria argued that the glass powders and quartz sands are both “predominantly silica,” and Chinese manufacturers were using the glass to evade a possible tariff on quartz. (Editor’s note: both glass and quartz contain silica, although the types are amorphous and crystalline, respectively.)
U.S. importer Bruskin International Inc. and others requested a hearing on the investigation’s widened scope. Commerce refused the request, citing procedural issues. Eventually, Commerce proposed – and the USITC accepted – crushed-glass surfaces in its quartz-surface unfair trade tariffs, although the legal definitions would exempt products using large-diameter recycled-glass pieces.
Bruskin, along with Arizona Tile LLC, M S International Inc. and Foshan Yixin Stone Company, filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) to overturn the inclusion of glass materials in the quartz-surface tariff. The group argued that Commerce erred in not allowing a separate hearing on widening the scope of the tariff investigation, and also questioned whether crushed should’ve been included at all.
At the CIT in late 2020, Senior Judge Leo M. Gordon dismissed the complaint, noting that the plantiffs “demonstrate remarkable chutzpah in that they were somehow treated unreasonably or unfairly by a scope modification that directly addresses open and blatant evasion of antidumping and countervailing duties on quartz surface products.”
The court of appeals ruling, written by Judge Todd M. Hughes, denied the appeal of Gordon’s decision, noting that Commerce didn’t have consider Cambria’s request to widen the scope of materials to be an amendment of its original complaint. The ruling also let stand the inclusion of crushed-glass products in the tariff definitions based on possible future evasion, and didn’t require actual evidence at the time of investigation.
