Dept. of Commerce initiates antidumping mattress investigations of seven countries

The antidumping and countervailing duty laws provide U.S. businesses and workers with a transparent, quasi-judicial and internationally accepted mechanism to seek relief from the market-distorting effects caused by injurious dumping and unfair subsidization of imports into the United States, establishing an opportunity to compete on a level playing field, the department said.

For the purpose of antidumping investigations, dumping occurs when a foreign company sells a product in the United States at less than its fair value. For the purpose of countervailing duty investigations, a countervailable subsidy is financial assistance from a foreign government that benefits the production of goods from foreign companies and is limited to specific enterprises or industries or is contingent either upon export performance or upon the use of domestic goods over imported goods, officials said.

The petitioners are Brooklyn Bedding, Corsicana Mattress Co., Elite Comfort Solutions, FXI, Innocor, Kolcraft Enterprises, Leggett & Platt, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, AFL-CIO.

The U.S. International Trade Commission is scheduled to make its preliminary injury determinations on or before May 15.

If the ITC determines that there is a reasonable indication that imports of mattresses from any of the eight countries materially injure or threaten material injury to the domestic industry, the investigations will continue and the DOC will be scheduled to announce its preliminary countervailing duty determination on June 25 and its preliminary antidumping determinations on Sept. 9, although those dates may be extended. If the ITC’s determinations are negative, the investigations will be terminated, officials said.

Source: Furniture Today