"My staff is still taking a look at that decision ... and seeing what effect it will have," Commerce Undersecretary Francisco Sanchez told Reuters.
"I'm not going to speculate until my staff and I have a pretty clear understanding of where we're going," he said after an event on U.S. government efforts to help expand trade opportunities for minority businesses.
Sanchez was reacting to a U.S. Court of International Trade ruling last week that said the Commerce Department erred in its application of both countervailing and anti-dumping duties on off-road tires from China.
The ruling, which many expect will be appealed, told the department to "forego the imposition of the countervailing duty law" in the case because it failed to show that it was not penalizing China twice for the same trade action.
Countervailing and anti-dumping duties are designed to offset different foreign trade practices.
The first are used to offset foreign government subsidies, while the second are applied on imported goods sold in the United States at less than fair market value.
For years, the Commerce Department refused to use countervailing duties against China on the grounds it was too difficult to calculate subsidies in "non-market economies."
Bowing to pressure from Congress, it changed that policy several years ago and has since imposed countervailing duties on a number of Chinese goods.
The U.S. Court of International Trade previously upheld that policy shift.
But its latest ruling said the Commerce Department did not take enough care in the tires case to avoid "double counting," or punishing Chinese exporters twice for the same practice, when both anti-dumping and countervailing duties are applied.
That's because the Commerce Department uses third-country prices -- instead of actual Chinese prices -- to calculate anti-dumping duties on Chinese goods, as it is required under U.S. law to do for non-market economies.
China has also challenged the U.S. policy change at the World Trade Organization, and a ruling in that case is expected to be made public in coming months.
One trade lawyer who asked not be be identified said the United States is widely believed to have prevailed on the issue of double counting in the WTO dispute.
If true, that would put the U.S. Court of International Trade ruling at odds with the WTO, he said.
The lawyer said he expected the Commerce Department to continue applying both countervailing and anti-dumping duties on imports from China while fighting the U.S. Court of International Trade ruling on appeal. (Reuters)
