DOC amends antidumping duty on Vietnamese CS Wind Group wind towers

After years of litigation, CS Wind Group is exempt from antidumping duty in the US (illustration photo)

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According to the Federal Register, 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. In the Initiation Notice, the department initiated an administrative review on all entries of merchandise exported by CS Wind Group.

Because wind towers produced and exported by CS Wind Group were excluded from the antidumping duty order on wind towers from Vietnam (effective from March 26, 2017), the department should only have initiated the administrative review on wind towers produced in Vietnam, where CS Wind Group was (1) the producer but not the exporter, or (2) the exporter but not the producer.

To correct this error in the Initiation Notice, on May 31, 2017, the Department issued this latest notice amending the initiation of the 2016-2017 antidumping duty administrative review of wind towers from Vietnam with respect to the CS Wind Group.

In December 2011, Wind Tower Trade Coalition, a group of US manufacturers of utility-scale wind towers, petitioned DOC to impose antidumping duties on CS Wind Group’s wind towers imported into the US from Vietnam. DOC conducted an investigation into whether CS Wind Group was engaged in such dumping, then in February 2013, imposed 51.5 per cent antidumping duties on CS Wind Group, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT).

CS Wind Group appealed to the United States Court of International Trade (CIT). In November 2014, after several determinations, both the CIT and DOC had found the company to have a weighted average dumping margin of 17.07 per cent, using surrogate financial ratios, which then went down to 17.02 per cent in May 2015.

Not satisfied with this result, CS Wind Group appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).

On August 12, 2016, the CAFC directed the CIT to remand the matter to the DOC, and in so doing: (1) reversed the CIT's affirmance of the DOC's use of packing weights rather than the factors of production (FOP) weights in its calculation of surrogate value; and, (2) vacated and remanded the CIT's overhead determination with respect to jobwork charges, erection expenses, and civil expenses.

The DOC issued its Final Third Redetermination on December 9, 2016. On March 16, 2017, the Court affirmed the Department's Final Third Redetermination in its entirety.

Wind towers are divided into onshore and offshore units. As CS Wind Vietnam introduces on its website, onshore wind towers, the company’s main product, are the structures that support wind turbine generators and blades.

Offshore wind towers are the structures that stand in the ocean to harness larger amounts of energy from more powerful sea wind. They are taller and heavier than onshore towers and also need higher levels of quality in fabrication to withstand severe weather conditions in the ocean.