Sourcing Product From China: You Should Know About Importer of Record Liability

The US Importer of Record is liable for antidumping and countervailing duties tied to the product being imported. The Importer of Record is the company listed in Block 26 of the U.S. Customs 7501 form. When I told a US Senator this, he responded by saying he “thought the Chinese company was liable for the duties, not the US company.”

Under US Antidumping, Countervailing Duty and Customs laws, the Importer of Record must exercise reasonable care in importing products and in filling out Customs forms. The Importer of Record must correctly state a product’s country of origin and also whether Antidumping and Countervailing duties apply to the imported product. A knowingly false statement on a Customs form constitutes criminal fraud.

If AD or CVD rates go up in a subsequent review investigation, the Importer of Record is retroactively liable for the difference, plus interest. Retroactive liability for AD and CVD cases is a particular problem involving goods imported from China, because the U.S. Commerce Department treats China as a non-market economy country. Dumping is generally defined as selling products in the United States below their normal value, which generally means selling a product in the United States below its price in the home market or below its fully allocated cost of production.

Since China is a non-market economy country, Commerce refuses to use actual China prices and costs to determine whether a Chinese company is dumping. It instead uses complicated consumption factors for raw materials and other inputs and surrogate values from five to ten constantly changing countries to calculate the Chinese company’s production costs. All this makes it impossible for the Chinese manufacturer/exporter to know whether it is dumping, never mind the US importer.

In the Mushrooms from China antidumping case, from the time the antidumping order issued in 1999 through numerous subsequent yearly review investigations, many antidumping rates were in the single digits because Commerce used India as the surrogate country. But when Commerce switched from India to Columbia as the surrogate country in 2012, the Antidumping rates went from less than 10% to more than 200%. The Importers of Record were then liable for the difference in the duty rates, plus interest.

How can you as an importer of products from China (or from anywhere else) avoid getting hit with a massive antidumping or countervailing duty fee? Do not become the Importer of Record. The dollars saved by this can be staggering.

In the Wooden Bedroom Furniture case, a US furniture importing company I had convinced not to be an Importer of record got off without having to pay a penny, while its Chinese manufacturer had to pay approximately 400 million in retroactive liability. Many US import companies were not so lucky and went bankrupt.

What if your company is the Importer of Record and your antidumping or countervailing rates go up? U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty laws are remedial, not penal. This means requesting review investigations at the Commerce Department, appealing adverse rulings to the Courts and working with Customs often can substantially reduce or even eliminate any penalties. Chinese exporters also can (and often do) use the Commerce review process to reduce their antidumping and countervailing duty rates so they can export to the US again.

We will be discussing the practical aspects of Chinese law and how it impacts business there. We will be telling you what works and what does not and what you as a businessperson can do to use the law to your advantage. Our aim is to assist businesses already in China or planning to go into China, not to break new ground in legal theory or policy.