Flower industry antidumping and countervailing duty defense

Asocolflores (Colombian flower industry trade association)

Our attorneys won a negative injury determination from the US International Trade Commission on imports of roses, representing the entire Colombian industry, notwithstanding 60 percent market share and declining prices. In the US antidumping investigation on roses, our team obtained a Department of Commerce decision to depart from standard antidumping methodologies to address unique issues of perishability and pricing differences due to differences in flower-giving holidays, representing 16 individual producers. Our attorneys obtained zero dumping margins for four producers.

We also represented the Colombian flower industry in a long-standing antidumping case involving other fresh-cut flowers. Throughout the 12-year history of that case, we represented scores of individual growers, obtaining low rates that permitted the Colombian industry to grow and continue to increase its exports to the US. The case ended when we proposed and negotiated a creative and complex settlement that created a flower promotion organization to engage in generic marketing in the US, operated jointly by the Colombian and US flower industries, and funded largely by monies that would otherwise have gone to pay duties. Our vigorous defense of the Colombian industry included cases in the Court of International Trade such as Queen's Flowers v. United States, in which we obtained the first preliminary injunction preventing a Commerce-determined antidumping duty cash deposit rate from ever taking effect. Our lawyers also obtained termination of countervailing duty suspension agreements.

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