Antidumping duties to continue for five more years

ITC leaves duties on Chinese wood bedroom furniture

Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, November 30, 2010

WASHINGTON — The U.S. International Trade Commission has voted unanimously to continue the imposition of antidumping duties on Chinese-made bedroom furniture for another five years, the ITC announced today.

The ITC commissioners' opinions on the case will be presented in a report that is expected to be completed around Dec. 14.
The vote marks the culmination a year-long Sunset Review process that determines whether to continue the duties for another five years. The U.S. government first imposed the duties since June 2004 because it determined that Chinese producers were selling wooden bedroom furniture at prices that are below normal market values, a violation of international trade laws.

The ITC's review technically began last December, but duty supporters and opponents began mobilizing before then to present their cases on why duties should or shouldn't continue.

By Dec. 31, 2009, legal counsel for members of the American Furniture Manufacturers Committee for Legal Trade, which had urged the original imposition of the duties, had prepared a 150-page document that said the duties should continue. Early in the fourth quarter of 2009, retailers began to revive the Furniture Retailers of America, a group that has opposed the idea of bedroom duties since their inception and that opposes them moving forward.

Based on the responses from both sides, the ITC decided on March 8 to perform a full review of the case, which has taken several months to complete.

While the original 2003 investigation focused largely on whether the domestic furniture manufacturing industry had suffered injury as a result of unfair pricing, the sunset review focused on whether there would likely be continued injury to the domestic industry without the duties in place for another five years.

By April, the U.S. Department of Commerce had endorsed the continuation of duties, saying that dumping at unfair prices would likely continue should the duties be revoked.

By early summer, the ITC had distributed questionnaires to domestic bedroom producers, importers, purchasers and Chinese producers. The responses to those queries helped the ITC staff asses the effects of duties and the likely outcomes should they be continued or eliminated.

On Oct. 5, the ITC held a hearing in Washington at which both sides presented their views on the duties. The testimony, as well as follow up briefs from legal counsel representing both sides, gave the ITC staff and commissioners further information to consider.

The ITC staff later prepared a 300-plus page report that presented the data collected from the questionnaires and provided a comprehensive overview of the state of the domestic and Chinese bedroom production industry since duties were first imposed.