Just because furniture is sold in a living room set doesn’t mean it isn’t wooden bedroom furniture, said the Commerce Department in a May 27 scope ruling. Commerce ruled that four types of chests imported from China by Ethan Allen are subject to AD duties on wooden bedroom furniture from China. It also found that marketing as part of a bedroom set is not required for a product to be considered wooden bedroom furniture.
A trade union representing U.S. tire factory workers on June 3 requested new antidumping and countervailing duties on passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China (A-570-016/C-570-017). The United Steelworkers (USW) union alleges that, since safeguard duties on Chinese tires expired in 2012, dumped and subsidized Chinese tires have flooded the U.S. market and hurt U.S. workers.
The Commerce Department will require cash deposits of estimated countervailing duties on imports of crystalline silicon photovoltaic products from China, it said June 3 in a fact sheet announcing its preliminary determination. The agency set CV duty cash deposit rates at 18.56%-35.21% for Chinese exporters. Domestic solar companies requested the duties to close a "loophole" in the 2012 AD/CVD orders on solar cells that’s allegedly letting in an increasing amount of Chinese solar modules made from Taiwanese solar cells (see 14010301).
The Consumer Product Safety Commission should revise its treatment of prints on textiles to reduce burdens related to lead testing, said the American Association of Footwear and Apparel in a June 2 letter addressed to CPSC Chairman Robert Adler. The decision that all types of prints on textiles are not inherently lead-free has inadvertently required lead testing for many products that never contain lead, said AAFA. CPSC had in April asked industry to suggest materials that shouldn’t require third-party testing as part of its effort to reduce testing burdens (see 13042226).
A proposal by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to set new requirements for voluntary recalls could undermine a program that quickly gets defective product off the market, said former CPSC Chairwoman Ann Brown in a letter to CPSC and several Congressmen dated May 30. By prohibiting disclaimers from companies initiating recalls and making voluntary corrective action plans legally binding, the November 2013 proposed rule (see 13112028) may make CPSC’s “fast track” program impossible, said Brown in the letter, which was posted by the blog Consumer Product Matters.
On June 3 the Food and Drug Administration posted new and revised versions of the following Import Alerts on the detention without physical examination of:
On June 3 the Foreign Agricultural Service posted the following GAIN reports:
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes June 3 to Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) electronic manuals. While some changes are minor, other changes may affect the admissibility of the plant products, including fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will soon begin allowing importation of female squash flowers from Israel into the continental United States. APHIS’ final rule imposes some conditions on imports of Israeli squash flowers, such as pest-exclusionary structures at production facilities, fruit fly mitigation, and a phytosanitary certificate from the Israeli national plant protection agency. The final rule takes effect July 7.
The Food Safety and Inspection Service is going forward with its plan to end its “HC01” salmonella testing procedures for raw beef products, and replace it with testing for salmonella in samples it already collects for E. coli analysis, it said. Beginning June 29, FSIS will stop HC01 testing in ground beef, except for “Category 3” establishments that exceeded agency standards in recent testing, said FSIS. In its place, the agency will begin analyzing for salmonella all raw beef samples that it collects for Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) analysis, including ground beef, trim, and other raw ground beef components FSIS samples at import establishments. It will also increase its sample portion from 25 grams to 325 grams.