WASHINGTON (Yosefardi) – Verso Corporation, Sappi North America and Appleton Coated LLC, together with the United Steelworkers (USW), Thursday called for an extension of duties on imports of coated paper from China and Indonesia that were previously determined to have threatened material injury to U.S. producers and workers.
Duties resulting from this determination are periodically reassessed under what are known as “sunset reviews.”
The original decision to impose duties was made by the International Trade Commission (ITC) in a bipartisan unanimous decision in November 2010. That decision was based on petitions filed by NewPage Corporation (since then acquired by Verso), Sappi North America, Appleton Coated LLC and the USW in September 2009 with the Department of Commerce and the ITC. The petitions alleged that certain coated paper from China and Indonesia had been subsidized and dumped in the United States, resulting in injury to the domestic industry and its employees.
The domestic coated paper industry had experienced capacity reductions and underutilization resulting in the loss of jobs in communities across the country. The petitions showed, and the Commerce Department and ITC validated, that unfairly traded imports from China and Indonesia were a significant contributor to that underutilization of capacity, mill closures and resultant job losses.
In a market where the demand for coated papers was declining, the ITC found that rising volumes of imported coated paper from the two countries threatened the domestic industry with material injury. The Commerce Department found that imports of coated paper from China were being dumped at margins ranging from 7.62% to 135.84% and were subsidized at margins ranging from 19.46% to 202.84%. The Commerce Department found that imports from Indonesia were being dumped at a margin of 20.13% and subsidized at a margin of 17.94%.
Since duties were imposed, imports from both China and Indonesia have dropped dramatically and fair market conditions have been restored.