TCNA Supports Unfair Trade Petitions Against Chinese Ceramic Tile

It seems that U.S. tile manufacturers have taken a move out of the quartz producers’ playbook by filing their own petition for countervailing and anti-dumping duties against Chinese products. In this case the product is ceramic tile, which has been claimed to be dumped into the domestic market and subsidized by the government of China.

The Tile Council of North America (TCNA) has stepped up in support of the petition with a press release that includes a statement from the executive director, Eric Astrachan.

“America’s tile manufacturers are happy to compete against fairly traded imports.  We have been hammered, though, by a flood of unfairly traded imports from China.  Chinese tile producers benefit from extensive government subsidies and dump their tile into the United States at ridiculously low prices,” said Astrachan.  “Domestic manufacturers had no choice but to seek relief from the federal government from these unfairly traded imports.  The future of the U.S. industry and of our member companies’ thousands of employees and their families depends on it.”

On April 11, several of the largest producers of ceramic tile in the U.S. filed petitions for anti-dumping and countervailing duties. The anti-dumping petition was filed in hopes of the federal government issuing duties on imported Chinese ceramic tile to compensate for injurious losses incurred by domestic producers and suppliers.

The petition for countervailing duties, filed concurrently, seeks additional compensation because government subsidies allow tiles to be sold in the U.S. below market value. It is now up to the U.S. federal government to investigate whether or not the claims are true. Should the investigation turn up evidence of the petitions’ claims, preliminary duties will be imposed in only a few months. Final duties would then be imposed at the conclusion of the investigation, which lasts around 16 months.

TCNA is a trade association that represents producers of ceramic tile, tile installation products, raw materials and other tile-related products. The organization was first established in 1945 as the Tile Council of America (TCA) and converted to its current state in 2003 after expanding to Canada and Mexico.