Bill Introduced to Send CDSOA Interest to Domestic Producers
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., introduced the Trade Cheating Restitution Act of 2025, which would allow interest on antidumping and countervailing duties collected since 2000 on commodities like honey, crawfish, garlic and mushrooms to be distributed to domestic producers of those products.
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The interest goes back to the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 (CDSOA), more commonly known as the Byrd Amendment, which was repealed in 2005, after the World Trade Organization said the distribution of trade remedy duties to domestic producers was more money than they spent bringing the cases. As a result, America's trading partners were allowed to impose retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports (see 04012110).
Thune and co-sponsor Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, had already written language into the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act which required CBP to distribute the interest realized on duties collected since 2014. This bill distributes interest collected between 2000 and Sept. 30, 2010 and interest realized from Oct. 1, 2010 and the date of the distributions after the bill becomes law. CBP would have no more than 210 days after the law's enactment to send the payments.
Domestic producers would need to file a certification that they previously had Byrd Amendment claims and they would want this special distribution.
The ways CBP has calculated interest under the Byrd Amendment has been subject to years of legal fighting from honey producers (see 2312050072 and 2407150031).
Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., also are co-sponsors.
"South Dakotan beekeepers are fortunate to have a stalwart champion in Senator Thune, who has never faltered in his support of our industry," Kelvin Adee, of Adee Honey Farms, based in Bruce, South Dakota, said in the release announcing the bill. "The much-needed funds that will be released to us through the bill he introduces today along with Senator Grassley and Senator Smith will help us compete with illegally traded honey and protect the health of our hives."
Adee Honey Farms is one of the companies that sued CBP for not paying liquidated interest, and appealed their loss at the Court of International Trade to the appellate court, where they also lost.