Commission investigates dumping of quartz surface products from China

Sources: Cambria Company, LLC, LeSuer, Minn.; CP staff

Responding to Cambria Co. petitions that allege dumping of slab and fabricated quartz surface products from China, the five-member U.S. International Trade Commission has issued a unanimous preliminary determination of injury and will continue investigation of company claims. A key player in high quartz content (> 90 percent) slabs used for countertops and premium interior furnishings, family-owned Cambria petitioned ITC and the U.S. Department of Commerce in April. 

“Dumped and subsidized Chinese imports are harming American workers, American businesses and American manufacturing,” says CEO Marty Davis. “We are encouraged by the actions taken thus far by both the Department of Commerce and the ITC to stop this unfair trading and restore a level playing field where we can compete fairly in a free market economy. The unfairly traded Chinese imports have disrupted healthy competition and threaten to gravely injure the quartz surfaces product industry at all levels of trade in the U.S.

“This situation was made possible only due to unfair foreign government subsidies and dumping by Chinese producers. These business conditions are created by a non-market-based economy, China, exploiting the dynamics of our market-based economy in the United States through Chinese government subsidy practices and other non-market-based targeted intrusion by the Chinese government. The Chinese government’s activities violate all the principles of market-based economies, and further to that, our existing U.S. and international trade laws. U.S. trade laws are designed to protect free and fair trade, to ensure an open, market-based economy. 

“The practices of the Chinese government are rogue and extremely damaging to many in the U.S. industry and to the entire U.S. economy. Our economy’s viability insists upon free and fair trade in a competitive marketplace environment—virtues assuring the proficiency and function of capitalism, the entire basis of American enterprise.”

The Commerce Department initiated countervailing duties (CVD) and antidumping duty (AD) investigations of imports of quartz surface products from China in May. Preliminary CVD and AD determinations are expected in September and November, respectively. The ITC’s preliminary determination is an important step toward duties being imposed to offset the unfair trading of Chinese imports, Cambria notes.