India Quartz Tariff Decision Delayed Again
WASHINGTON – An action that would substantially increase duties on many India-made quartz surfaces won’t happen before year’s end.
Late last month, the U.S. International Trade Administration (ITA) extended a review of anti-dumping unfair-trade tariffs on the material until Jan. 4 at the latest.
The division of the U.S. Commerce Department previously indicated a decision would be made in early November, then reset that deadline to Dec. 6.
The review’s initial conclusions, released in July, proposed a reset of anti-dumping tariffs from single digits to 161.51% for 51 companies and 323.12% for a group of three Indian companies. The action would also retroactively impose those duties for most shipments from December 2019.
The massive increase apparently came after the three Indian companies, whose import data is used to monitor surface-production costs, filed information some five hours after a deadline extension. The ITA refused to accept the late information and proposed imposing tariff rates equal to the levels cited by Cambria Company LLC in its original unfair-trade complaint against Indian quartz-surface imports in 2019 with the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC).
The Nov. 30 ITA memo, approved by James Maeder, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Operations, noted that “it is not practicable to complete the final results of this by the current deadline,” referring to Dec. 6.
“The current deadline for the final results of review does not afford Commerce sufficient time to review and properly address the voluminous commentary and complex arguments raised in interested parties’ case briefs, rebuttal briefs, the public hearing, and several meetings with interested parties,” according to the memo from Kyle Clahane, International Trade Compliance Analyst, Office III, Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Operations.
Public data filings on the case include a call from at least one U.S. representative, along with letters from ten other U.S. representatives and U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
The letters urged Raimondo to direct the ITA to set “appropriate rates” if the main problem was a five-hour filing delay.
“Parties making good faith attempts to provide Commerce with requested information should not be penalized ro inadvertent mistakes,” Kaine wrote Raimondo. “My office’s understanding is that there is precedent for accepting late responses; for example, Commerce accepted a late filing in a proceeding involving uranium from Russia in October 2022.”
The anti-dumping tariff is one-half of the action taken by the USITC, a separate and independent federal agency, in 2020. The recent review of countervailing (subsidy) activity, conducted concurrently with anti-dumping by the ITA, recommended that those single-digit tariffs on Indian quartz surfaces remain unchanged.
Unfair-trade tariffs on Pokarna Engineered Stone Ltd., (PESL), producers of Quantra, are reviewed separately. The ITA review proposes a reset PESL’s anti-dumping tariff to 0% and no change on the countervailing duties.
View the Nov. 30 ITA memo here.
View the Nov. 18 letter from U.S. representatives here.
View the Nov. 30 Sen. Tim Kaine letter here.
