Department of Commerce Announces new Antidumping Tariffs on Quartz from China
“On November 14, 2018, the Department of Commerce announced its affirmative preliminary determination in the antidumping duty investigation of imports of quartz surface products from the People’s Republic of China.” You can read the fact sheet here. This means there will be NEW anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese quartz surfaces imported into the United States. The tariffs will add 242.1% to 314.1% to the cost of bringing Chinese quartz surfaces into the United States. The new tariffs take effect once they are published in the Federal Register, which is likely within a few business days.
In September, the Commerce Department set an effective 34% tariff for most Chinese quartz surfaces on countervailing (subsidized value) practices. Unlike the countervailing tariffs, these new anti-dumping tariffs involve five different levels. Some companies rate as low as 242.1%, but one large firm, Foshan Yixin Stone Co. Ltd., gets an adjusted 314.1%.
The additional tariffs on Chinese quartz surfaces will quadruple the final costs to importers. For example, a slab with a customs value of $500 could have a punitive tariff (at a combined antidumping/countervailing rate of 348%) of $1,740, for a total off-the-dock cost of $2,240.
The Commerce Department filing notes that Chinese quartz surfaces that arrived in the United States up to 90 days prior to Register publication and are “unliquidated” are also subject to the high anti-dumping tariffs. This means that quartz surfaces that arrived in the past 90 days (backdating to mid-August) could be assessed retroactively for the duties. This would apply for surfaces that are still in a port-of-entry warehouse, a local slab yard or installed as fabricated countertops.
The antidumping/countervailing tariffs are separate from the blanket Trump administration (Section 301) tariffs on a wide variety of Chinese goods. An initial 10% tariff went into effect earlier in the fall. The additional 15% is set to take effect in January if there’s no trade deal between China and the United States.
This tariff came very abruptly not having time for importers to cancel the shipments. 300% on top of 34% is a way to get businesses bankruptcy and consequence firing person, etc etc the scary thing is that is happening to other products too.instead of protecting they are liking the economy
We are both developers and contractors, so this affects us in more ways than one. And we buy (or bought) a lot of quartz from China. This concept of retroactively applying the tariff is something we did not know could happen. We all need to protect ourselves against this possibility.
This is not right. We need to fight for our rights. My small business is getting killed over this.
Same here. We own a small family company and signed our first contract with a major GC in our area a little after this whole process started. When we heard of this AD and CVD process that had started in May, we had already signed the contract and could not cancel the first contract of our company.
We had heard this would go into effect by the end of September, so we did all we could to get the order of custom made quartz countertops into our warehouse before that, and we did.
Now, by the end of November, we were notified we should make a deposit over 4 times the total amount of our materials, almost double our contract amount and over 10 times our profit on our first deal. All because of this absurdly insane retroactive duty we were not even aware of.
How come an entrepreneur be slammed and killed right at the start by such a never seen high tariff that can not only make him go bankrupt, but ruin his entire future as GC’s fear hiring companies with lawsuits or company owners with bankruptcy??
This is completely unfair, inhumane and in my opinion a distorted idea that should be changed.
They should at least analyse case by case. If it’s a company that had always been importing 10 containers a month and then started importing 50 after the process started, that is in bad faith. Now if it is a first time importer like us or a small company or small lot that does not impact the BIG guys at all, they should reconsider.
if you didn’t see this coming maybe you shouldn’t be in business in there first place. We got the next round coming in march brace yourselves. LG moved their plant to the US a long time ago