FBI seeks share of duties
Standard also wants antidumping funds
By Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, February 25, 2007
Washington — Furniture Brands International and Standard Furniture, which originally opposed the antidumping petition, have filed federal lawsuits to claim some of the duties the U.S. government has collected on Chinese-made wood bedroom furniture.
The manufacturers and importers filed separate suits here in January in the U.S. Court of International Trade, against the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Furniture Brands claims that under the federal Byrd Amendment, it is owed $6.3 million of the antidumping duties collected. So far, the government has taken in $31.8 million on goods imported between June 2004 and Dec. 31, 2005.
Late last year, the government distributed $21.8 million of those funds to petitioners that supported the original antidumping investigation in 2003 and 2004. Officials said they were withholding the remaining $9.9 million because
FBI's lawsuit claims that Customs officials had indicated last year that the company would be eligible to receive the $6.3 million, but were withholding it pending the outcome of the litigation.
Standard's suit didn't say how much it expects to receive.
FBI and Standard claim they have been adversely affected because they were omitted from a list of "affected domestic producers" eligible to receive a portion of the duties collected.
FBI maintains its opposition to the original petition and investigation, Lynn Chipperfield, senior vice president, said last week.
But because the government investigation found that dumping was occurring, he said, it now agrees that it has been hurt by imports and deserves a portion of the proceeds that the petitioners are receiving.
A Standard spokesperson declined to comment last week.
In their complaints, FBI and Standard cite two other trade cases involving a seafood processing company and a producer of ball bearings. Neither of these companies was a petitioner in their industry's antidumping investigation, but each claims it has a legal right as a domestic producer to a portion of the duties collected.
In the ball bearings case, the Court of International Trade found that the provision denying Byrd monies to nonpetitioning companies violated the Constitution's clause that all deserve equal protection under the law.
FBI and Standard also called the denial of duties as a violation of their right to free speech, saying it's unfair to withhold Byrd funds from companies that didn't support the antidumping petition.
"The way the Byrd Amendment is set up now, only those companies that supported the original petition are entitled to participate in the distribution of the Byrd monies," said Chipperfield. "This court found that provision is unfair.... It doesn't make sense, the way the Byrd Amendment is set up now, only to distribute the funds only to those companies that supported the petition, if the purpose in the first place was to level the playing field."
A group of companies known as the American Furniture Manufacturers Committee for Legal Trade filed the original petition for an antidumping investigation on wood bedroom furniture in late 2003. The investigation found that Chinese manufacturers were shipping wood bedroom furniture to the U.S below cost.
Furniture Brands went on record as opposing the antidumping petition.
In a November 2003 interview with Furniture/Today, company chairman, president and CEO Mickey Holliman said the company examined the issues and laws, "and we have concluded that we will strongly oppose any efforts to see imposition of such tariffs." He said that eliminating unfairly priced bedroom imports would not save or restore U.S. factory jobs.
In testimony before the ITC in November 2004, Chipperfield acknowledged that many domestic furniture manufacturers had a difficult time in the previous several years. But he added that blaming imports of wood bedroom furniture from China was "the simplest and most convenient excuse."
"The evidence simply doesn't support the conclusion that the domestic industry has been threatened with material injury because of imports," he added. "As a matter of fact, the evidence is to the contrary. The increase in inventories has helped the domestic industry compete and gain access to consumers that we would otherwise not be able to serve. It has made it possible for us to offer certain products to consumers at lower prices than we would have to charge had we manufactured those products ourselves here in the United States."
John Bassett, who chairs the Legal Trade group and is chairman of manufacturer Vaughan-Bassett Furniture, said in a statement last week after the Furniture Brands filing, "We had a right, when we saw what was happening to our industry and our workers, to request an investigation. They have a right, if they believe they are legally owed something, to file a lawsuit."
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