Thomas Russell
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Commerce has identified five Chinese case goods manufacturers as mandatory respondents in this year’s administrative review of import duties placed on Chinese-made wood bedroom furniture.


The companies are Fine Furniture (Shanghai) Ltd., Foshan Guanqui Furniture, Fujian Lianfu Forestry Co. Ltd., Shanghai Aosen Furniture Co. Ltd. and StarCorp Furniture (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.

Mandatory respondents are the companies that the government will require to submit extensive information about their business practices. As part of the review process, the DOC will study each company to determine its individual import duty.

It will then take the weighted average of those duties to determine a revised Section A rate for a larger group of companies. The review process will take much of the rest of the year, with preliminary results expected in October and final results early next year.

The government considers the five mandatory respondents to be the largest exporters of Chinese-made wood bedroom furniture to the United States — excluding any members of a group of 24 companies that negotiated to opt out of the administrative review process. Those 24 companies were able to lock in their current duty rates, which are under 8%.

That list of 24 companies includes three that were among six mandatory respondents during the initial antidumping investigation — Dongguan Lung Dong Furniture Co. Ltd., Rui Feng Woodwork Co. Ltd. and Lacquer Craft Mfg. Co. Ltd.

The administrative review process is an audit of duties assigned to various Chinese furniture companies whose products were imported between June 2004 and December 2012. Those duties, which now range between 2.32% and 198%, were the result of an investigation of whether wood bedroom furniture was “dumped,” or sold at unjustifiably low prices.

Proponents of the antidumping petition argued that the Chinese companies were selling the goods at below cost, contributing to the loss of thousands of U.S. furniture manufacturing jobs.

Approximately 79 companies the DOC is auditing this year will be affected by the results of the review process. That list of 79 does not include 24 companies that opted out of the process.

Geoff Beaston, president and CEO of case good importer Fine Furniture Design & Marketing was pleased to see his parent company, Fine Furniture, among the list of mandatory respondents. The company currently is on the Section A list and pays a rate of 6.65%.

Beaston did not comment on the company’s chances of lowering its rate through the review process. However, he said he believes the new review will show the company isn’t dumping furniture below cost onto the U.S. market.

“We are very happy to respond to the process and to be judged on our business practices,” he said. “We are fortunate to be on the mandatory list (of respondents) and will be satisfied at the end of the review that we were judged by our own business practices.”