US opens review process for China import duties

Washington DC — The US Commerce Department has published a notice inviting interested parties to request an administrative review of the antidumping and countervailing investigation that resulted in the imposition in 2015 of elevated import duties on passenger and light truck tires from China.

The notice is a standard action Commerce publishes every year during the anniversary month of an antidumping or countervailing duty order, finding, or suspended investigation and is in addition to the ongoing "sunset" five-year review of the same import duties also under way.

Those interested have until 31 Aug to submit their request, Commerce said.

The antidumping action (A-570-016) against Chinese passenger and light truck tires is one of 34 such actions open for action, Commerce said, and the countervailing action (C-570-017) is one of eight such actions.

According to Commerce's notice — published in the Federal Register — interested parties may request in writing that the Secretary conduct an administrative review. The request must specify the individual producers or exporters covered by an antidumping and/or countervailing finding.

In addition, an interested party must state why it desires the Secretary to review the particular producers or exporters, on an order-by-order basis, which exporter(s) the request is intended to cover.

The sunset regulatory review under way is being handled by the International Trade Commission (ITC), which is trying to "determine whether revocation of the (AD) and (CVD) duty orders on certain passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China would be likely to lead to continuation or recurrence of material injury."

The sunset provision calls for the ITC to review AD and CVD orders every five years. The import duty orders went into effect on 12 Aug 2015.

The antidumping duties imposed then ranged from 14.4% to 87.9% and countervailing duties ranged from 20.7% to 100.8%, depending on the manufacturer. The "China-wide" rates were 30.9% and 87.8%, respectively.

Since the imposition of these duties, imports of passenger tires from China have fallen nearly 95% to 2.8 million units last year from 50.4 million units in 2014, according to US Commerce Department data.