U.S. starts collecting China import duties

Now that the smoke has cleared and the shouting’s mostly over on the issue of duties on Chinese-made passenger and light truck tires, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has begun collecting the antidumping and countervailing duties from Chinese tire makers and importers.

At the same time, the U.S. Department of Commerce has made slight adjustments on some of its duty calculations on the tires, according to an Aug. 10 Federal Register notice.

Shandong Yongsheng Rubber Group Co. Ltd. was given a final countervailing duty rate of 116.73 percent instead of the original 100.77 percent, according to the amended final orders issued by the Commerce Department’s International Trade Commission.

The actual assessed rate for Yongsheng, however, will be 116.33 percent, because one of the subsidy programs offered to Yongsheng has ended, Commerce said.

Also, Giti Tire Global Trading Pte. Ltd. and six other Giti-affiliated companies will be given slightly elevated antidumping duty rates of 30.74 percent vs. 29.97 percent. However, the countervailing duty rate for Giti Tire (Fujian) Co. Ltd. will drop to 36.79 percent from 37.2 percent.

Sixty-five “separate rate” tire makers, originally assessed antidumping duties of 25.3 percent, will see their rates increase to 25.84 percent. The “All Other” group in countervailing duties will see their rates drop to 30.61 percent from 30.87 percent.

All other rates will remain as determined by Commerce June 12, including:

• A 20.73-percent countervailing duty rate against Cooper Kunshan Tire Co. Ltd.;
• A 14.35-percent antidumping duty rate against Sailun Group Co. Ltd. and nine subsidiaries and affiliates, including Dynamic Tire Corp. and Husky Tire Corp. in Canada; and
• A “China-wide” antidumping duty rate of 87.99 percent against all tire companies not specifically listed in the antidumping duty order.

Commerce reviewed its final antidumping and countervailing duty determinations after receiving petitions from Sailun and Giti, according to the Federal Register notice.

After analyzing comments and rebuttals, Commerce said it determined it had made “ministerial errors” in calculating some of the antidumping and countervailing duty rates.

The notice also directs CBP to begin collecting the duties. This effectively ends a discrepancy in duties collection in which CBP collected provisional antidumping but not countervailing duties.

When the parties involved in the duties investigations asked for both cases to be decided simultaneously, this meant the statutory limit on collecting preliminary countervailing duties would run out more quickly because those duties were decided first, according to a spokesman for the International Trade Administration.

CBP stopped collecting provisional countervailing duties on the Chinese tires March 31. However, with Commerce’s final order now in place, CBP will collect both countervailing and antidumping duties on Chinese passenger and light truck tires for the next five years.

The duties became official July 14 when the International Trade Commission voted 3-3 to find evidence of material injury to the U.S. tire industry because of underpriced Chinese imports.

The United Steelworkers (USW) union, which petitioned the ITC for relief against Chinese tire imports in June 2014, was jubilant about the decision, saying “trade should not be a one-way street. Until today, that street was dominated by the producers of Chinese-made, unfairly traded tires. Now we can begin to reclaim our market for more American-made tires and jobs.”

However, China’s Ministry of Commerce urged the U.S. government to reconsider the duties decision. The duties will “severely damage the export benefits of the Chinese enterprises involved in the case,” the ministry said in a statement.

A long list of tires is specifically excluded from the duties, including racing tires, trailer tires, specialty tires and temporary spares.