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Antidumping duties being used for what?

By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, February 18, 2007

We have watched with great interest the actions of our fellow furniture wholesalers/manufacturers since the imposition of antidumping duties on wood bedroom furniture imported from China. Just a short time ago, we received our first invoices from U.S. Customs for liquidation of entries for that furniture, from 2004 and 2005.

We can respect the motives behind the initial petition — to maintain a competitive playing field. But as the first dollars are being collected and disbursed to the petitioners, we have to ask where our dollars are going. How much has been invested in upgrading plants with new technology to lower the cost of production? How many workers have been retrained in new, efficient processes? How many new production plants have been opened in economically distressed areas to provide jobs for American workers?

Perhaps the more pertinent questions would be focused on just the opposite. How many of the petitioners have actively moved parts purchasing or full-scale production to Asia? How many are funding and investing in new facilities in Asia, to garner the benefits of efficient Asian manufacturing, while avoiding the very duties they lobbied to have imposed? How many threw their lot in with Lifestyle and opened their showrooms during the Forbidden City Furniture Show, focused exclusively on Chinese imports? How many of our dollars are going to support profitability driven by Asian imports, rather than to protecting American jobs?

It gives us pause to wonder that a small group can inflict so much disruption and turmoil on an entire industry, yet have no accountability for demonstrating that the basis of their complaint has been mitigated or improved because of their actions.

We'll pay our duty because we obey the law, and believe in the American way of life. We might not have even been so reluctant to pay them if we believed that we were enhancing the life of the American labor force. But we pay them with great reluctance when we believe they are enriching only a small group of individuals.

Frederick G. Rohrbach, president and owner, and William S. Cubberley, director of business development, A-America

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