Domestic Manufacturers Ask for Clarification of ‘Occasional Chests’ Exemption to China Wooden Bedroom Furniture Duties
A coalition of domestic furniture manufacturers recently submitted a request that the Commerce Department clarify that occasional chests are exempt from antidumping duties on wooden bedroom furniture from China. In its Aug. 24 request for a changed circumstances review, the American Manufacturers Committee for Legal Trade asks that Commerce insert language into the scope to resolve confusion over what qualifies as an exempt occasional chest, including two sets of detailed dimensional criteria.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
According to the request for review, CBP has over the past year been applying greater scrutiny on furniture from China, requiring many importers to pay antidumping duties at up to 216.01 percent on “occasional chests” that had previously been entering duty free for a decade. This “sea change” in CBP’s approach has importers wondering whether the American Manufacturers Committee for Legal Trade, a group of domestic manufacturers that originally requested wooden bedroom furniture duties in 2003, has been pushing for expanded coverage, said the domestic coalition.
However, the domestic manufacturer group has “no desire” to expand the scope of duties, which would only lead the government to divert precious resources that could be better spent on addressing “pervasive circumvention issues,” it said. The scope “does not include (and never has included) occasional chests,” also known as accent chests, living room chests, stand-alone chests, and hall chests, it said in the request for review. Domestic manufacturers “have always understood and acknowledged that there is a distinction between bedroom chests and occasional chests and have intended to include only bedroom chests” under the scope of duties, it said.
Part of the problem is changes in the furniture industry that have rendered obsolete previous distinctions between bedroom and occasional chests. The original petition for antidumping duties said living room chests are typically not as deep as bedroom chests (because the primary purpose of bedroom chests, unlike living room chests, is for storage). While that was “an accurate reflection of the industry in 2003,” when the petition was submitted, growing concern over industry caused by tipping furniture has caused manufacturers to build living room occasional chests deeper.
In part to address the changes in the furniture industry, the American Manufacturers Committee for Legal Trade is requesting Commerce add the following to the list of exemptions to the scope of the antidumping duty order on wooden bedroom furniture from China: “(5) other non-bedroom furniture, such as television cabinets, cocktail tables, end tables, occasional tables, occasional chests, FN wall systems, book cases, and entertainment systems.”
The domestic manufacturers group is also asking Commerce to add a footnote to the scope listing two detailed frameworks for deciding whether a piece of furniture is occasional or for the bedroom. The first was proposed by an importer in an ongoing scope proceeding. The second, “while not likely being met by any appreciable volume of existing imports of occasional chests, is intended to provide manufacturers of occasional chests the option of building chests that fall within” the occasional furniture exemption. Each framework includes exacting dimensional requirements. One of the frameworks also includes criteria for how occasional chests are decorated and marketed.
The two sets of criteria only “serve as a starting point that establishes a framework for more readily distinguishing out-of-scope occasional chests from in-scope bedroom chests,” said the American Manufacturers Committee for Legal Trade. “This means that even though the two sets of criteria … only cover a minority of out-of-scope chests, the broader framework of the proposal allows for the addition of other sets of criteria that will cover a greater share of imports of non-subject occasional chests,” it said. “Additional criteria for out-of-scope chests may be proposed in this and in future changed circumstance review requests in order to provide readily observable factors that identify out-of-scope occasional chests,” said the domestic manufacturer coalition.
In a brief filed Sept. 9 in response to the request for changed circumstances review, BJ’s Wholesale Club said it agrees that occasional chests are not covered by AD duties on wooden bedroom furniture, and does not disagree with the two sets of criteria for occasional chests that should automatically be exempt. However, should Commerce amend the scope as requested by the domestic manufacturers, the agency “should not turn this into a bright-line rule and determine that occasional chests that may fail to meet one of the particular criteria in Petitioners' proposed definition are necessarily included in the scope of the Order,” said the brief.
Commerce has until Oct. 8 to decide whether to begin the changed circumstances review.
Email ITTNews@warren-news.com for a copy of the request for changed circumstances review and BJ’s Wholesale Club’s response.