Steel Importers Subject to AD/CVD Now Have New Threat

Last summer the U.S. Congress passed the ENFORCE Act. The ENFORCE Act provides a path for U.S. companies to ask for investigations of foreign products (and the importer of record) when a question arises as to evasion of duties through misrepresentation of the product/source country, etc. Last week Wheatland Tube became the first company to file a complaint under the ENFORCE Act. The specific details of the complaint are not yet public other than what was provided in the Wheatland Tube press release (circumvention of duties on pipe used in the solar industry).

Steel Market Update has requested more information about the filing but to date has not received anything new. We have reached out to Wheatland’s attorney, Roger Schagrin and we reached out to trade attorney Lewis Leibowitz as we try to understand the process further. We have received a response to our inquiry from Mr. Leibowitz who told us: