Chinese Quartz Hits 300% Tariff Barrier

By Emerson Schwartzkopf

WASHINGTON – The China quartz-surfaces boom will encounter something even higher that the sector’s growth in U.S. imports … in new U.S. trade tariffs.

Click photo to see U.S. antidumping tariff schedule for Chinese quartz surfaces.The federal Commerce Department filed documents today to announce new anti-dumping tariffs that will add 242.1% to 314.1% to the cost of bringing Chinese quartz surfaces into the United States.

The new tariff is the second half of punitive actions taken as part of the unfair-trade petition filed by Minnesota-based manufacturer Cambria Company LLC in mid-April. The Commerce Department set an effective 34% tariff for most Chinese quartz surfaces in September on countervailing (subsidized value) practices.

The new tariffs won’t take effect until published in the U.S. government’s Federal Register, which is likely within a few business days. (The preliminary order is available here from Stone Update.)

Unlike the countervailing tariffs, which cited several companies with high, 100%+ duties and the remainder at an effective 34%, the antidumping tariffs involve five different levels. Some companies rate as low as 242.1%, but one large firm – Foshan Yixin Stone Co. Ltd. – and any company not mentioned in other categories gets an adjusted 314.1%.

The additional tariffs on the value of Chinese quartz surfaces will effectively quadruple the final costs to importers. For example, a slab with a customs value of $500 could have a punitive tariff (at a combined antidumping/countervailing rate of 348%) of $1,740, for a total off-the-dock cost of $2,240.

The Commerce Department filing also granted a request by Cambria for “critical circumstances,” where a country accelerates exports of an item to avoid upcoming tariffs. In the filing, it notes that quartz-surfaces that arrived in the United States up to 90 days prior to Register publication and are “unliquidated” are also subject to the high anti-dumping tariffs.

Unlike a regular cash-and-carry transaction, tariffs paid at U.S. ports-of-entries are considered only as deposits by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Liquidation occurs after final review of the tariff payment, which can be more than 300 days after goods are hauled away from the docks.

The critical-circumstances ruling means that importers of quartz-surface products arriving in the past 90 days – backdating to mid-August – could be assessed retroactively for the duties, whether the surfaces are still in a port-of-entry warehouse, a local slabyard or installed as fabricated countertops.

The antidumping/countervailing tariffs are separate from the blanket Trump administration (also known as the Section 301) tariffs on a wide variety of Chinese goods. An initial 10% tariff went into effect earlier in the fall, and an additional 15% is set to roll in January if there’s no substantial trade deal between China and the United States.

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