Chinese wood anti-dumping sent back to Commerce Dept.

New York—The U.S. Court of International Trade has ordered the U.S. Dept. of Commerce to reconsider its calculation of anti-dumping duties on Chinese wooden flooring, according to a story at Law360.

The department imposed duties on dozens Chinese exporters of multilayered wood flooring in November 2011, hitting Zhejiang Layo Wood Industry Co. with a 3.98% rate. 
Zhejiang Layo and others challenged the duties to the CIT, which ruled July 31 that the government’s determinations were unreasonable in light of its current explanations.

For instance, according to the Law360 story, the Commerce Dept. used a questionable dataset as the basis for calculating values for Zhejiang Layo’s so-called core veneers. 
“It follows that Commerce’s decision to value core veneer at a price higher than face veneer, when both the record and common sense dictate that core veneers are less valuable than face veneers, is unreasonable,” the court said.

The court said Commerce also used a questionable sequence of calculations to determine the values for high-density fiberboard.
 The government began its investigation into Chinese imports of the flooring in November 2010 after a petition was filed by an industry group called the Coalition for American Hardwood.
 The organization charged the flooring was being dumped and improperly subsidized by the Chinese government.