CITAC Counsel Urges House Ways & Means Committee to Ensure That Trade Remedy Laws Consider Interests of Consuming Industries.

WASHINGTON -- Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition (CITAC) Counsel Lewis Leibowitz told the House Ways & Means Committee Trade Subcommittee today that the interests of all Americans, including those in consuming industries, must be weighed when considering changes to trade remedy laws. He stressed to the Committee that any changes to U.S. trade law should ensure that consuming industries are not subject to excessive duties that hurt their ability to be globally competitive.

In his testimony at the Subcommittee's hearing on "Legislation Related to China," Leibowitz said that, when considering changes to trade law, the Subcommittee's goal must be "imposing the correct amount of taxes, for that is what antidumping and countervailing duties are." He added, "Excessive taxation of imports hurts United States industries employing millions of workers that depend on import competition to keep American business globally competitive."

Leibowitz urged the Committee to support HR 1127, the American Manufacturing Competitiveness Act, which would give industrial users legal standing in trade remedy cases involving those products. He noted that just this week, steel consumers had to borrow time from foreign producers to state their views to the U.S. International Trade Commission in the five-year "sunset" review hearing for hot-rolled steel.

"The inability of consuming industries to participate fully in trade remedy cases to argue based on the full record and to appeal decisions that injure them and are contrary to law, is fundamentally unfair," said Leibowitz.

Leibowitz also urged the Subcommittee to reject legislation that would require the Commerce Department to re-adopt zeroing in antidumping investigations and to maintain zeroing in other antidumping proceedings, including administrative reviews, sunset reviews and changed circumstances reviews.

"The most important issue for consuming industries in the administration of trade remedy laws is that the right amount of tax is collected. Antidumping duties are intended to offset the unfair economic effects of subject imports and any tax should not exceed that amount. Zeroing disserves that objective because it overstates the economic effect of subject imports (those imports subject to antidumping investigations and orders) in the U.S. market," Leibowitz told the Subcommittee.

Leibowitz also addressed legislation pending before Congress related to the issue of Chinese exports.

"The current U.S. trade deficit with China provides ample reason for concern but does not provide justification for ill-considered actions that are destined to fail in their attempts to change China's conduct, yet are likely to injure American consuming industries... we believe it is wholly inappropriate to use U.S. trade remedy laws in an attempt to achieve a reduction in the trade deficit with China," said Leibowitz.

Concluded Leibowitz, "The trade deficit with China is due to many factors other than dumping or subsidization, and the trade relationship between the United States and China will not be fundamentally changed by the imposition of excessive antidumping and countervailing duties on China's exports to the United States."

To read Leibowitz's full testimony, please visit http://www.citac.info.

CITAC is a coalition of companies and organizations committed to ensuring that consuming industries and manufacturers in America have access to reliable supplies of globally priced materials necessary for those industries to produce their products. For additional information, visit www.citac.info or contact Amanda Lahan at [phone] or [e-mail]