CBP Says Cabinet Importer Evaded AD/CVD Orders on Cabinets in EAPA Determination
BGI Group, doing business as U.S. Cabinet Depot, evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on wooden cabinets and vanities from China, CBP said in a Jan. 27 Enforce and Protect Act determination. BGI evaded the orders by misrepresenting the country of origin of its entries as Vietnam, the agency said. While BGI maintained that its Vietnamese supplier, HOCA Vietnam, further processed components from China, CBP said that the orders' scope language still includes such products.
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CBP said that HOCA Vietnam brought in "substantial volumes of wooden furniture components" from Chinese suppliers and included them into ready-to-assemble (RTA) kits that were then shipped to the U.S. importer listed as of Vietnamese origin. The scope, though, says that there are types of processing done in a third country that don't change the country of origin. These processing types are "trimming, cutting, notching, punching, drilling, painting, staining, finishing, assembly, or any other processing that would not otherwise remove the merchandise from the scope of the order if performed in the country of manufacture of the in-scope product."
CBP said that HOCA Vietnam's processing falls under the types established in the scope and thus BGI evaded the ADD/CVD orders. "Even based on HOCA Vietnam’s own estimates, the covered merchandise in the RTA cabinet kits shipped to the United States accounted for a significant part of the overall costs of all the parts contained in those RTA kits, and HOCA Vietnam’s methodology understates the shares," CBP said.
The case was originally requested by the American Kitchen Cabinets Alliance, which based the EAPA allegation on evidence that included aggregate U.S. import data, individual shipment data from global trade data company Panjiva and affidavits from industry figures (see 2107150031). CBP based its decision, in part, on AKCA's analysis of the customs agency's BGI site visit and breakdown of the Vietnamese suppliers' operation.
As is common to many other EAPA cases, BGI told CBP that various elements of the investigation violated its due process rights. The importer said that CBP's failure to provide BGI and HOCA Vietnam or their legal counsel with the confidential versions of the allegations against them under an administrative protective order violates their right " to effective legal representation." CBP told BGI that no APO process exists under its current regulations. "Parties submitting information to CBP are entitled to request that their business confidential information be concealed from other outside parties, and CBP is required to bracket and redact business confidential information that appears in its own documents," CBP said.