ADCVD Administrative Reviews

What is an Administrative Review?

The U.S. Commerce Department currently maintains 448 antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duty orders which are intended to provide relief to American companies and industries impacted by unfair trade practices in foreign exporting countries.

These Orders contain both (1) narrative language that describes the scope of the coverage of the Order, (2) a list of HTS tariff provisions that could be impacted (this list is not intended to be either definitive or exhaustive), and (3) a list of deposit rates applicable to various individual manufacturers and exporters who participated in the Investigation, including a country-wide rate applicable to "all-other" exporters.

Unlike other countries, the ADCVD laws of the United States employ a retrospective method of assessing the magnitude of AD and CV duties.  This means that instead of attempting to set actual ADCVD rates prospectively (based on estimates for in the year to come), the Department of Commerce will annually review the actual pricing of shipments that entered the United States during the prior year (that period of time under review is known as the "Period of Review" or POR).  

These annual review are scheduled to begin in the "anniversary" month of the Order.  Thus, if an AD or CV duties Order is for example issued in January 2017, then Commerce accepts requests for participation in an Annual Review proceeding to begin in January of each following year.

In the interim of Commerce's decision in an annual review, the liquidations of ADD/CVD entries are subject to suspension by Customs.  When the results of the administrative review are released, then Customs will liquidate the entries, under specific "liquidation instructions" issued by Commerce.

As a result of an Annual Review, Commerce may conclude that for imports in the POR the ADCVD deposit rates were (1) correct , (2) too low, or (3) too high.   If the deposit rates were too low, then the Annual Review will seek to correct that by impose a higher actual AD/CVD rate against the suspended entries, and accordingly, Commerce's liquidation instructions will require Customs to issue bills directing the Importer of Record to pay the addition balance of ADD/CVD duties owed for the merchandise.   

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