Metal Bed Frames With Wood Panels Not Covered by Wooden Bedroom Furniture Duties

Seven metal bed frame models with wood panels and slats that were imported by Zinus are not subject to antidumping duties on wooden bedroom furniture from China, the Commerce Department said in a Jan. 11 scope ruling. The AD order does not cover the furniture because it is not “made substantially of wood.”

Commerce addressed seven bed frame models with metal structures, wooden support slats and wooden panels in the headboard or footboard.

The order doesn't define “made substantially out of wood,” Commerce said in the ruling. Therefore, the department said it looked to prior scope rulings to clarify the issue. In those, it said it considered whether there was “extensive use of wood products in all of the essential structural components,” as well as whether the wood was so necessary to the product that the product would not exist if the wood were removed.

The structure of Zinus’ bed frames are made of metal, Commerce said. Although the frames’ mattress support slats are wood, the AD order excludes mattress supports, it said.

The headboard and footboard of Zinus’ frames are made of wooden panels, Commerce said. In contrast to an earlier scope ruling in which Commerce said wooden bed frame panels “comprised a large portion of the visible surfaces of the bed as a whole,” it said in this case only small portions of each product are wood, whereas the vast majority is metal. As to whether the product would cease to exist if its wood components were removed, Commerce said the wood panels were mainly “aesthetic,” and the beds would “continue to function as sturdy, steel framed, platform bed products.”

It dismissed the petitioners’ argument that the wooden panels were the “distinguishing characteristic” of the products.

“The product descriptions of Zinus’ Amazon brochures emphasize that they are sturdy steel beds, albeit refined by the wooden panels,” it said. “Indeed, the Amazon listings for the at-issue beds emphasize the ‘metal platform bed frames’ in their titles and often neglect to note the wood panels outright.”