Alan Price Discusses U.S. Duties on Wind Towers from China and Vietnam

Alan H. Price, chairman of Wiley Rein’s International Trade Practice, was quoted by Reuters and Bloomberg News in coverage of duties the U.S. Department of Commerce plans to levy on wind towers imported from China and Vietnam.

Commerce set final duties on December 18 for the utility scale towers after determining that Chinese and Vietnamese companies used unfair pricing practices to undercut U.S. manufacturers’ sales, according to the articles. The agency’s investigation was prompted by petitions filed last year by the Wind Tower Trade Coalition (WTTC), a group of U.S. producers.

“Over the last years, in a period of peak demand, the U.S. industry should have been profitable,” Mr. Price, lead counsel to the WTTC, said in the December 18 Reuters story. “Instead, due to the surge in dumped and subsidized imports, the industry lost market share and saw its profits collapse.” The Reuters article was picked up by more than 15 news organizations including The Baltimore Sun and Fox Business.

Utility scale wind towers imported from China will be subject to U.S antidumping duties ranging from 44.99% to 70.63%, and countervailing duties of 21.86% to 34.81%, Bloomberg and Reuters reported. Commerce also set final antidumping duties of 51.50% to 58.49% on wind towers from Vietnam. The duties must be approved by the U.S. International Trade Commission.

“The final results are an important step in remedying the material injury already suffered by the U.S. industry and will force the Chinese and Vietnamese producers to compete fairly,” Mr. Price said in the December 19 Bloomberg story, which also ran in The Washington Post.