Antidumping duties could top $60M
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, July 12, 2004
High Point — Preliminary duties on Chinese wood bedroom furniture this year are likely to total tens of millions of dollars.
Here's how the math could work out:
Assume that China will ship $580 million worth of wood bedroom, or half of last year's total, to the United States in the second half of this year. (With the duties in place, the actual amount may well be lower.)
The preliminary duties, given as a percentage of the value of shipments, will vary according to which Chinese factory makes the product.
If the same factories shipped furniture as last year, duties would average 10.92% on about four-fifths of the product and would be 198.08% on the rest. (The 10.92% is the rate for 82 Section A companies and also is the average of the duties for the seven largest Chinese manufacturers, called "mandatory respondents." The 198.08% is the all-China rate for factories that didn't qualify as mandatory respondents or Section A.)
This would result in total duties of about $281 million — $50.7 million on 80% of the shipments and $230 million on the other 20%.
But that won't happen, because importers aren't likely to buy from factories with the sky-high all-China rate. Duties are more likely to average 10.92% on all bedroom furniture from China, or maybe less as customers drop the higher-duty factories among the seven mandatory respondents — whose duties range from 4.9% to 24.34% — and buy more from the lower-rate plants.
At 10.92%, the duties on $580 million worth of shipments would amount to $63.7 million.
