Members of the Committee on Pipe and Tube Imports — domestic producers of circular welded pipe and light walled rectangular tubing products — announced the formation of a special industry task force to seek an end to the evasion of antidumping duties on imports of steel tubular products from China. The task force is asking the U.S. Government to take appropriate law enforcement action to end these injurious and illegal practices.
The industry task force reported that they have been documenting entries of imports since the beginning of the 3rd Quarter of 2009 that were of Chinese origin and usually shipped directly from China, but importers falsely claimed country of origin as Vietnam, Malaysia or Oman. In one case, the tube was entered in containers that were categorized as used books. They have shared this information with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service (CBP).
Industry producers also continue to work with Members of Congress to obtain legislative and regulatory relief to remedy the problem. A group of California U.S. Representatives sent a letter to Customs on December 18, 2009 alerting the agency to these allegations and asking that they take appropriate action to resolve the problem.
“These domestic producers agree that it is time to elevate this issue to the highest levels in the U.S. Government and to specifically urge the Customs Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Justice to not only make this a priority, but use their law enforcement authority to prosecute these offenders,” said Roger B. Schagrin, Executive Director and General Counsel of the Committee on Pipe and Tube Imports (CPTI) Washington, DC. “We are encouraged to learn of recent actions taken by the Obama Administration to elevate the dialogue with China on the impact of their unfair trade practices. These U.S. companies brought petitions, completed questionnaires twice for the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), traveled to Washington, D.C., on two occasions for hearings, dedicated financial resources to legal expenses, and demonstrated to the Commerce Department and the ITC that the Chinese industry was trading unfairly and that the U.S. industry was injured.”
Schagrin also noted that there are companies in China that specialize in creating false paperwork to evade duties, and that “the U.S. government should get the government of China to shut down these purveyors of fraud.”
Tubing products affected by the task force’s actions include pipe used in plumbing, in sprinkler, fence and structural applications and tubing used for ornamental fencing, in light construction for window guards and frames as well as for metal furniture, exercise equipment, store shelves, fencing and towel racks. The claims of circumvention of duties are of particular concern to U.S. producers who obtained relief from unfairly traded imports from China in 2008.
“[O]ur company is prepared to take whatever actions are necessary to end these customs fraud practices and send a strong message to all of our trading partners that the U.S. will not tolerate these assaults on our manufacturing sector which continue to jeopardize our company from obtaining any relief from existing orders on these products,” said Barry Zekelman, President of the John Maneely Co. “These duties were put into place to allow the industry to recover and allow our industry to contribute to the recovery of the U.S. economy - instead we are losing ground to people who cheat.”
The task force plans to take its message nationwide to the public about the importance of this issue to the national economy. Industry leaders will also have meetings in the coming weeks with Congressional leaders and federal officials to further discuss these issues.