In a remarkable turnaround for the company, wind towers produced by CS Wind Vietnam can now be freely exported to the US market without fear of anti-dumping duties.

The United States Court of International Trade (CIT) has reaffirmed a final decision made by the Department of Commerce’s (DOC) that wind towers made by CS Wind Vietnam Co. Ltd (CS Wind) will be subject to zero per cent anti dumping (AD) duties.

The decision marks a major success for the company, coming as it does five years after a prohibitively high AD of 51.5% had been imposed, making it all but impossible for it to export the towers to the US market.

Now, with the CIT and DOC saying “they will not initiate any new administrative reviews of the AD order with respect to merchandise produced and exported by CS Wind,” the company can resume exports to a main market.

CS Wind had appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) to reverse the CIT’s earlier decision, approving the DOC’s use of packing weights instead of factors of production in calculating CS Wind’s surrogate value, as well as the omittance of job work charges, erection expenses, and civil expenses for the company.

According to the final decision, merchandise produced by CS Wind and exported by any other company, merchandise produced by any other company and exported by CS Wind and merchandise produced by any other company not related to CS Wind are not entitled to the anti-dumping duty exclusion.

Any other company seeking to sell utility scale wind towers in the US market will attract a 58.49 per cent tariff.

Previously, after several determinations, both the CIT and the DOC had found the company to have a weighted average dumping margin of 17.07 per cent, using surrogate financial ratios, which then went down to 17.02 per cent in 2015.

The DOC started had conducting a less than fair value investigation into CS Wind’s exports in 2013, having issued an official anti dumping duty of 51.5 per cent on CS Wind’s towers.

CS Wind Vietnam, the core manufacturer of wind towers for the Asian, South Pacific and US markets, has several factories in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province. — VNS