On October 24, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that it would pay domestic crawfish producers $19 million in delinquent antidumping duties collected from Chinese freshwater crawfish producers.  The payments are to be made pursuant to the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Act (CDSOA), commonly referred to as the Byrd Amendment.  The CDSOA allows for anti-dumping and countervailing duties collected by CBP to be disbursed to domestic producers injured by foreign dumping and subsidies.  The act was passed on October 28, 2000 and remained effective until October 1, 2007.  Although the CDSOA was repealed in 2007, domestic crawfish producers will still collect these payments because the $19 million represents  delinquent duties that Chinese producers did not pay between late 2000 and 2007.  CBP stated payments will begin in November 2014.

In order to be eligible to receive a portion of the disbursement, a domestic producer must have supported the initial antidumping investigation and submit a request to the International Trade Commission indicating that they desire to receive a distribution.  The antidumping order on Chinese crawfish tail meat initially went into effect in September 1997, and has been continued by the International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce three times.  Each continuation occurred at the required 5-year sunset reviews and each time the agencies determined that “revocation of the antidumping duty order on freshwater crawfish tail meat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would likely lead to continuation or recurrence of dumping and material injury to an industry in the United States.” The most recent continuation was issued May 16, 2014, extending the antidumping order until 2019.  Duty margins on crawfish tail meat from China range from 91.50 percent to 201.63 percent.

If you have questions about antidumping orders or CDSOA distributions, please contact Frohsin & Barger.