Trump Administration Set to Impose Duties on Yarn From China, India

In another example of the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement of U.S. trade law, the Department of Commerce is poised to begin collecting countervailing and antidumping duties on polyester-textured yarn imported from China and India. The move comes after two major U.S.-based synthetic yarn producers alleged in petitions that China and India were harming the domestic industry by dumping cheap, subsidized imports of yarn on the U.S. market. In 2017, those imports from China and India totaled $35 million and $19.6 million, respectively, according to the Commerce Department. “This is an important issue with respect to U.S. producers of fiber and textile products,” the petitioners’ attorney, Paul Rosenthal of Kelley Drye & Warren in Washington, D.C., said in an interview Thursday. “We’re happy that our allegations concerning subsidies by the Chinese and Indian governments have been found to be accurate and has resulted in some preliminary duties.”