Importer Challenges Scope Ruling, Says Boards for Cabinet Making Not 'Wood Mouldings'

A wood board importer filed for summary judgment Jan. 26 challenging an August 2023 scope ruling that found the company’s edge-glued boards intended for making cabinets were subject to the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on wood mouldings and millwork products from China (Hardware Resources v. U.S., CIT # 23-00150).

The importer, Hardware Resources, said the Commerce Department incorrectly applied the three-step analysis used in scope rulings (see 2309050023). The plain language of the scope order should have been sufficient to determine its products were out of scope, Hardware said. Even if it had been lawful for Commerce to proceed to (k)(1) or (k)(2) factors, those factors also supported a ruling that the boards were not covered, it said.

Commerce found that the scope’s plain language covered the boards after “only a cursory discussion,” Hardware said.

“Although Commerce acknowledges that the first step of its analysis in a scope inquiry should be to determine whether the language of the scope is dispositive, it appears to have skipped this step and proceeded directly to the (k)(1) factors,” it said.

Commerce said in the ruling that the scope order didn't include definitions of “continuously shaped wood” or “what constitutes ‘grooved,'" but the importer argued the department “omitted any discussion of the meaning of the operative phrase ‘mouldings and millwork products.’”

The boards are imported by Hardware to manufacture cabinets, and not machined or molded, the importer said. Hardware explained that its boards have small grooves on one side to assist in cabinetmaking. But the products the orders are intended to cover were for use “as coverings for floors, walls, doors and in other areas in residential and nonresidential construction," the brief said.

Commerce was incorrect to determine that those grooves were continuously shaped, which would transform the products into in-scope moulded products rather than “mere mark[s] or score[s].” It said that any proper definition of “mouldings and millwork products” would have made clear that boards intended for further processing wouldn't be covered.

“Wood boards manufactured into drawer sides are plainly not mouldings or millwork for the same reason that cabinet parts, furniture parts, and lumber are not mouldings or millwork, i.e. they are physically distinct products created by different processes for different purposes,” the company said.

Even if Commerce had been correct to continue on to later steps of analysis, it conducted those incorrectly, the importer said. Commerce ignored key primary source evidence, it said. The ITC defined “mouldings and millwork products” during its injury investigation as wood products with decorative moulded elements or made in a mill, which excluded Hardware’s products from the order, the importer said; Commerce also shouldn't have ignored that even domestic petitioners described end-use as an important qualification in the scope order, it said.

Finally, it said that k(2) factors were not fulfilled, either, because the boards didn't match the physical characteristics nor the end use of the products described by the scope order.