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Court denies Furniture Brands' claim to millions in Byrd funds

Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, November 16, 2011

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Court of International Trade has denied Furniture Brands International's claim to nearly $25 million in duties tied to Chinese-made bedroom furniture.
     A Furniture Brands official said last week that the company is appealing the decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals here.
     The U.S. government distributes the funds under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act. Otherwise known as the Byrd Amendment, this allowed supporters of antidumping petitions to collect duties assigned to foreign producers and paid by importers of record of products including Chinese bedroom furniture.
     The Byrd Amendment has been repealed by Congress, but duties on imports made before October 2007 can still be distributed to petitioners. The petitioners typically are U.S. manufacturers that have been injured by unfairly priced imports.
     In the wood bedroom case, some U.S. manufacturers that did not support the bedroom furniture petition - including Furniture Brands, Ashley, Ethan Allen, Standard and Kimball - also are seeking a share of the duties. The Furniture Brands case is the first one the Court of International Trade has ruled on.
     U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which distributes the CDSOA funds each year, is holding back more than $150 million in duties until the litigation is resolved, according to distribution reports.
     In previous court filings, Furniture Brands has said it is owed about $25 million of this amount. It argued that it should receive these funds because like the petitioners, it too had lost sales to low-cost imports.
     FBI also claimed that the law saying that only petitioners that supported the antidumping initiative could collect CDSOA monies is a constitutional violation of its right to free speech. That also is one of the bases of its appeal, which was filed Nov. 4.
     "Under the Byrd Amendment the government is rewarding certain companies in our industry who agreed with the government's proposed policy and punishing others for expressing a different opinion," said Jon Botsford, senior vice president and general counsel of Furniture Brands. "The ‘supporting' companies have already received rewards in excess of $125 million from the government for qualifying investments made in their U.S. manufacturing operations, despite the fact that most of them also import products from Asia."
     He said of the government's policy, "Not only is it unconstitutional, but it is also unfair and kills U.S. manufacturing jobs."
     Joe Dorn, an attorney representing the U.S. petitioners in the wood bedroom case, was not available for immediate comment.
     FBI had vocally opposed the antidumping petition during a 2004 hearing before the U.S. International Trade Commission.
     The Court of International Trade's Oct. 20 decision upheld a February 2009 decision made by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington that the CDSOA was constitutional.
     The court also denied new claims by Furniture Brands, including one that sought to have the company considered to be in support of the petition because it provided information to the ITC during the 2004 investigation.

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