US Pushes Back Against Tile Importer's Classification Claims in Remand Comments
The United States on Jan. 13 joined plaintiff Elysium Tile in supporting the Commerce Department’s redetermination on remand. Elysium said in its own comments that it was satisfied with Commerce’s new report of an ex parte meeting held with its competitor during a scope ruling proceeding (see 2412030060) (Elysium Tiles v. United States, CIT # 23-00041).
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But the U.S. pushed back against Elysium’s attack on Commerce’s continued finding on remand that its composite tiles were covered by antidumping and countervailing duty orders on Chinese-origin ceramic tile (see 2410290042). The importer again said that its tile was partly marble, not just, as the department claimed, ceramic with decorative elements.
In the redetermination, “Commerce found that the base layer of the composite tile is explicitly covered by the scope as it is comprised of porcelain or vitrified ceramic,” the government said in its Jan. 13 comments. The department then reasonably found that the tiles’ marble layer was a decorative element, it said.
The U.S. called Elysium’s disagreement “meritless” and characterized it as “fault[ing] Commerce for relying on the ‘express’ scope language.”
“[T]he express scope language is exactly what Commerce should rely on, and indeed did rely on, to reach its remand redetermination,” it said.
And it pushed back on Elysium’s alternative interpretation of the orders’ language. The orders define ceramic tiles as “articles including a mixture of minerals including clay … that are fired so the raw materials are fused to produce a finished good that is less than 3.2 cm in actual thickness.” Elysium argued that its products couldn’t be considered a “finished good” after the ceramic bases were fired because the marble top layers of their tiles still hadn’t been affixed at that point.
But nothing in the scope language “requires that firing must be the final production stage,” the U.S. said.