SMA's Crushed Glass 'Pieces' Not Large Enough for AD/CVD Exclusion, Commerce Says

Crushed glass products imported by SMA Surfaces do not qualify for an exemption for crushed glass surface products from antidumping and countervailing duties on quartz surface products from China (A-570-084/C-570-085), the Commerce Department said in a scope ruling issued July 15. Though SMA argued to the contrary, Commerce affirmed that the exclusion requires that products have one-centimeter-wide pieces within three inches of each other to qualify.

Specifically, the scope of the AD/CVD orders on quartz surface products from China exempt crushed surface products meeting four criteria: “(1) the crushed glass content is greater than any other single material, by actual weight; (2) there are pieces of crushed glass visible across the surface of the product; (3) at least some of the individual pieces of crushed glass that are visible across the surface are larger than one centimeter wide as measured at their widest cross-section (glass pieces); and (4) the distance between any single glass piece and the closest separate glass piece does not exceed three inches.”

SMA contended that the fourth criterion means that glass pieces of any size can be within three inches of each other to qualify. Nothing in the scope defines glass piece as written in that fourth factor, it said. “Therefore, SMA Surfaces argues that the scope exclusion language cannot be interpreted to require that glass pieces larger than one centimeter are visible across the surface because the third criterion only requires that ‘some’ of the crushed glass pieces be larger than one centimeter,” Commerce said.

Commerce, citing a previous scope ruling on the issue (see 2003110046), disagreed. “The third criterion of the crushed glass scope exclusion defines a ‘glass piece’ as pieces of glass ‘larger than one centimeter wide as measured at their widest cross-section (glass pieces).’ The fourth criterion then specifies that it is these one-centimeter glass pieces that must be at most three inches apart,” the agency said.

“An examination of the pictures of the three glass surface products shows that they do not meet the crushed glass scope exclusion, because not all one centimeter ‘glass pieces’ are within three inches of another one centimeter ‘glass piece’ across the surface of the product,” Commerce said.