This morning, 10 U.S. mattress producers and 2 labor unions filed 12 antidumping (AD) and 1 countervailing duty (CVD) petitions with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against mattresses imported from 13 countries.
The countries named in the AD petitions are Bosnia/Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burma, India, Italy, Kosovo, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, Slovenia, Spain and Taiwan. The dumping margins alleged in the petitions range from 43% for Poland up to 1094% for Slovenia. The single CVD petition is against Indonesia, a country whose mattress exports are already subject to a U.S. antidumping order. The petitions allege that unfairly traded imports of finished mattresses from these countries are causing material injury to the US mattress industry.
The entities that filed these petitions are Brooklyn Bedding LLC, Carpenter Company, Corsicana Mattress Company, Future Foam, Inc., FXI, Inc., Kolcraft Enterprises Inc., Leggett & Platt, Incorporated, Serta Simmons Bedding, Inc., Southerland Inc., Tempur Sealy International, Inc., The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Services Workers International Union, AFL-CIO.
DOC will now have 20 days to determine whether the allegations in the petitions are sufficient to formally initiate investigations of these imports. If DOC initiates the investigations, its responsibility in the AD cases is to determine whether mattresses from these cases were sold in the United States at less than fair value, and in the CVD cases to determine whether the foreign producers have received unfair subsidies. The ITC will decide whether the U.S. mattress industry has been materially injured by the unfairly traded imports.
On August 18, 2023, ITC staff are expected to schedule a conference to consider evidence regarding whether the U.S. mattress industry has been materially injured or threatened with material injury by imports from the countries under investigation.
This is the third set of trade cases involving imported mattresses. The first was an AD investigation of mattresses from China filed in 2018. The second set, filed in 2020, involved AD investigations against 7 additional countries and a CVD investigation against China. In each of these prior cases, DOC found dumping and subsidies, and the ITC found that the U.S. mattress industry had been materially injured by reason the unfairly traded imports.
