CS Wind Vietnam facing dumping charges once again

Australian athorities started an investigation on Vietnamese wind towers

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The investigation was initiated after an application was lodged by Australian wind tower manufacturers Keppel Prince Engineering Pty Ltd (KPE) and Ottoway Fabrication Pty Ltd (OF). The complaint alleges that the Australian wind towers industry has suffered material injury due to wind towers exported to Australia from Vietnam at a price lower than their normal value.

The Vietnamese exporter implicated in the investigation is CS Wind Vietnam, the Vietnamese wind tower base production arm of CS Wind Corporation (Korea). The applicants, KOE and OF, believe that “prices from CS Wind of Vietnam actively undercut the Australian industry prices on available tenders” in 2015, causing material injury to the Australian industry.

The applicants also believe that injury from the dumped import commenced in 2013, when 70 out of 90 wind towers available for tender from the Snowtown 2 project were awarded to Vietnam. Additionally, CS Wind Vietnam also secured 40 out of 75 wind towers from Ararat Wind Farm in 2015, and a total of 99 wind towers from the Hornsdale Wind Farm project in 2015 and 2016.

The investigation will examine transactions between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2016 to determine whether dumping and material injury has occurred, as well as examine details of the Australian market from January 1, 2013 for injury analysis purposes.

After the initial findings, ADC concluded that there appear to be reasonable grounds to support the applicants’ claims and estimated the dumping margin for the investigated period to be 15.7 per cent. A temporary anti-dumping duty maybe imposed on Vietnamese wind towers, effective from not earlier than 60 days since the initiation of the investigation on June 8, 2017.

On July 7, importer Siemens Wind Power - the project manager of the Hornsdale Wind Farm project, sent a submission to ADC disputing the allegations that the Australian wind tower industry has suffered material injury caused by import dumping from Vietnam and recommending that no anti-dumping measures be imposed on wind towers exported to Australia from Vietnam.

ADC is expected to issue a preliminary affirmative determination earliest on August 7 and a statement of essential facts no later than September 26. Involved parties will have 20 days to respond after the statement is published in public record.

The applicants, KPE and OF, also cited in their application the anti-dumping investigation on CS Wind Vietnam and its parent company, CS Wind Corporation.

In December 2011, Wind Tower Trade Coalition (WTTC), a group of US manufacturers of utility-scale wind towers, petitioned DOC to impose antidumping duties on wind towers imported to the US from Vietnam. An investigation was conducted, and in February 2013, DOC determined that CS Wind Vietnam and CS Wind Corporation are a single entity, CS Wind Group, and imposed a 51.5-per cent anti-dumping duty on it.

After the decision, CS Wind Group appealed to the United States Court of International Trade (CIT). After several decisions, both CIT and DOC found the company to have a weighted average dumping margin of 17.07 per cent in 2014, which was then revised to 17.02 per cent in May 2015.

CS Wind Group then appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). DOC issued its Final Third Redetermination on December 9, 2016.

On March 16, 2017, the court issued its final judgment, sustaining the department's final results of redetermination. On March 29, 2017, pursuant to this court decision, effective March 26, 2017, the department excluded from the antidumping duty order wind towers that are produced and exported by CS Wind Group.

On April 10, 2017, the department published a notice of initiating an administrative review of the antidumping duty order on wind towers from Vietnam for the period between February 1, 2016 and January 31, 2017.

Because wind towers produced and exported by CS Wind Group were excluded from the antidumping duty order on wind towers from Vietnam as a result of the above ruling, on May 31, 2017, DOC issued an amended initiation of administration review only on entries where CS Wind Group was (1) the producer but not the exporter, or (2) the exporter but not the producer of subject merchandise.