CBP Demanding Return of AD/CV Duty Revenues Distributed under Byrd Amendment

(World Trade Interactive)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is demanding that U.S. companies return within 30 days certain distributions of antidumping and countervailing duty revenues they received under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act. Earlier this year a U.S. federal appeals court ruled that the CDSOA (the so-called Byrd Amendment), which required CBP to distribute AD/CV duty revenues to affected U.S. producers, did not apply to imports from Canada and Mexico. As a result, CBP is now seeking the repayment of tens of millions of dollars in AD/CV duties assessed on products imported from those two countries that were distributed in 2003, 2004 and 2005.

The Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports wrote to CBP December 4 urging the agency to withdraw these letters or at least extend the compliance date by 60 days “to enable the Executive Branch to reconsider the demand for repayment.” The letter asserted that the repayment requests are improper because CBP represented to the Court of International Trade that repayment would be inappropriate and the CIT rejected a request that repayment be required, stating that “[w]hen the government grants or distributes money to parties, those parties have some right to rely on that money they receive.” The coalition added that the timing of CBP’s repayment requests, amid “the depths of the nation’s worst building and housing crises in decades,” could not be more harmful.