Coats Calls for Collection of Anti-Dumping and Countervailing Duties on Imported Goods
WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Dan Coats (R-Ind.), chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, today delivered his 51st Waste of the Week speech and highlighted $2.3 billion owed to the United States from uncollected anti-dumping and countervailing duties.
Under federal law, anti-dumping duties are special fees that are placed on products shipped to the United States at unfairly low prices. Sometimes, this occurs when a foreign manufacturer sells a product in the U.S. for less than it costs to make the product. Countervailing duties are fees placed on products imported to the United States that are made in countries where the foreign government unfairly subsidizes the product to lower the sale price.
To level the playing field for American companies and their workers, the U.S. Department of Commerce calculates the duties that should be placed on the imported product to make up for these predatory trade practices. Once the Department of Commerce calculates the money owed to the United States, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which oversees all imports to the United States, is responsible for collecting those fees.
“Even though CBP is legally directed to collect all of these fees, the Government Accountability Office recently discovered that from 2001 to 2014 CBP has failed to collect about $2.3 billion in anti-dumping and countervailing duties,” said Coats. “Now there are a number of reasons why CBP has trouble collecting these fees, but one key reason is CBP does not always collect the fees once an item is initially imported.”
CBP is supposed to collect these fees within the first six months of entry or once Commerce asses the fee. However, GAO found that out of the 41,000 uncollected bills, the median “age” of the bills was 4.5 years. Now, the CBP estimates that more than half of this $2.3 billion is considered “uncollectable.” Additionally, nearly 1,000 of these uncollected bills were between 10 and 13 years old.
“When CBP is waiting that long to try to collect money owed to the United States, it is no wonder that some companies no longer ship to the U.S. or have been dissolved,” said Coats.
Another issue GAO highlighted is that CBP does not accurately assess the risk a company will not pay the required fees. Companies exporting certain products are less likely to pay the required duties, as are products from certain countries. By including these two factors in its risk assessment, the GAO estimates that CBP could have much higher success collecting these anti-dumping and countervailing duties.
“American manufacturers work tirelessly to compete on a global market, sometimes against those that do not play by the rules,” said Coats. “This is one reason why I supported bipartisan legislation that was enacted earlier this year that would give CBP the tools necessary to better enforce our trade laws, such as requiring CBP to better track which foreign companies may be less likely to pay fees owed to the U.S.”
To watch Senator Coats’ speech, click here.