US lowers anti-dumping duties on Chinese tires

Washington — The US department of commerce’s international trade administration has lowered the preliminary anti-dumping duties it issued earlier this year against all but one of 68 manufacturers, importers and distributors of passenger and light truck tires from China.

In the document issued by commerce 19 March, the preliminary anti-dumping duty levied against Giti Tire Global Trading Pte. Ltd. and its subsidiaries remained at 19.17 percent, the same level the agency set in its original preliminary determination Jan. 21.

However, the duty against Sailun Group Co. Ltd. and its subsidiaries was slashed almost in half, to 18.58 percent from the original 36.26 percent.

All 66 other companies — including such names as Cooper Tire & Rubber Co., Bridgestone Corp., Goodyear Dailan Tire Co Ltd. and Pirelli Tyre Co Ltd. — saw their anti-dumping duties reduced to 18.99 percent from 27.72 percent.

All of these duties are in addition to the existing 4 percent import tariff on tires.

The commerce order — which had not yet appeared in the Federal Register as of 24 March — was issued “to correct significant ministerial errors,” according to the document’s summary.

A significant ministerial error, the order said, is when inadvertent errors in arithmetic cause substantial miscalculations of the duties owed.

Commerce found no significant errors in the anti-dumping margin calculations it made for Giti, the agency said, but it did find errors in its calculations for Sailun. Amending Sailun’s preliminary duties led commerce to do the same for the “separate rate” companies, meaning all the others, it said.

The reduced rates for Sailun are retroactive to 27 Jan, the day the original anti-dumping duty determination was published in the Federal Register, commerce said. For the “separate rate” companies, the lower duties are retroactive to 29 Oct 2014, 90 days before the publication of the original order, the agency said.

When the original duty determination was issued, Cooper said commerce would give the company an offset of 6.97 percent from its assessed duty of 27.72 percent, lowering its rate to 20.75 percent. Cooper confirmed that the offset still would apply to the lowered rate, reducing its anti-dumping duty rate to 12.02 percent.

This is the second time in its countervailing and anti-dumping duty investigation of Chinese passenger and light truck tires that the commerce department has reduced its initial duty determinations. On 24 Nov 2014, the agency levied preliminary countervailing duties of 15.69 percent; the next month, it reduced those to 12.03 percent.

Commerce’s final determination on countervailing duties is due on or about 6 April, and its final determination on anti-dumping duties on or about 12 June.