WASHINGTON—The U.S. Commerce Department's International Trade Administration has reaffirmed the antidumping duties against off-the-road tires imported from China that it first set in 2008.
Listing 50 different Chinese OTR tire importers, Commerce set antidumping duties for each importer ranging from 5.1 to 12.83 percent, with most companies at the higher level.
One manufacturer—Hebei Starbright Co. Ltd., the Chinese subsidiary of the former GPX International Tire Corp.—had duties set at 29.93 percent. The entity rate—i.e. the antidumping duty rate for all Chinese companies not listed in the Jan. 14 Federal Register notice—was set at 210.48 percent.
Last August, Commerce began a routine five-year review of the OTR tire duties it issued in August 2008 at the behest of Titan Tire Corp. and the United Steelworkers union.
Supporters of the tariffs responded to Commerce by the Sept. 3, 2013, deadline for comments, whereas the Chinese OTR tire manufacturers did not.
However, the same manufacturers have filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, claiming that a 2012 allowing countervailing duties to be levied against goods from China and other non-market-economy countries is unconstitutional.