Clemson, S.C.—U.S. ceramic tile manufacturers, representing over 90% of all U.S. ceramic tile manufacturing, are filing anti-dumping and countervailing duty petitions with the federal government seeking the imposition of substantial tariffs on imports of ceramic tile from India to remedy unfairly low-priced imports that have injured domestic manufacturers and flooded the market with uncertified porcelain tiles.
“American tile manufacturers have always welcomed fair competition from imports,” said Eric Astrachan, Tile Council of North America (TCNA) executive director. “In fact, U.S. manufacturers have plentiful deposits of clay and feldspar, an efficient and well-respected labor force, local community support, state-of-the-art equipment and affordable energy—so much so that major exporters from Italy, Spain, Brazil, Mexico and China have built facilities in the U.S. from which to compete on a global scale. However, Indian tile producers enjoy substantial government subsidies, which in conjunction with selling excess capacity at dumped prices, has allowed them to flood the U.S. market. Over the last 10 years, sales of tile from India have increased from a mere 344,000 square feet in 2013 to nearly 405 million square feet by the end of 2023. Our domestic manufacturers had no alternative but to petition the federal government for relief from these unjust trading practices. The vitality of the U.S. industry and the livelihoods of thousands of employees and their families within our member companies depend on it.”
Specifically, the industry’s anti-dumping petition seeks the imposition of tariffs estimated between 408% to 828%, in response to ongoing massive and widespread dumping. The countervailing duty (or anti-subsidy) petition seeks the imposition of additional tariffs to remedy the impact of numerous Indian government subsidies—subsidies that have further injured domestic manufacturers.
According to Barnes & Thornburg, trade counsel for the Coalition for Fair Trade in Ceramic Tile, as a result of these petitions, the federal government will launch an investigation, and if it finds that Indian imports are unfairly traded and have injured or threaten to injure U.S. tile manufacturers, the government will impose tariffs on Indian tile imports. The government would first impose preliminary tariffs in a few months and would impose final tariffs at the conclusion of its investigation in approximately 16 months, with the calculation of such final tariffs applied retroactively to the date of preliminary tariffs, and possibly to the date of initiation.