This fireside chat recap is a from FreightWaves’ Intermodal Summit.
FIRESIDE CHAT DETAILS: A group of U.S. manufacturers that manufacture intermodal container chassis found themselves losing huge market share to imports from China. They concluded that China was not competing fairly under international trade laws and banded together to seek action from Washington. Their lead attorney sits down with editor at large John Kingston to describe how the producers won a stunning victory. (A FreightWaves article on the case can be found here.)
SPEAKER: Robert DeFrancesco, partner, Wiley Rein LLP
BIO: DeFrancesco is an international trade partner at the Washington law firm of Wiley Rein LLP. His practice involves all aspects of international trade and trade remedy proceedings. His expertise lies in both U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty proceedings and export control matters before various agencies and courts. DeFrancisco has been recently named “International Trade MVP” by Law360 and one of DC’s “Super Lawyers” for International by Super Lawyers magazine.
KEY QUOTES FROM ROBERT DeFRANCESCO
“When we put this coalition together, they represented close to 100 percent of domestic production.”
“Since the case was filed, and even while duties were being put in place, domestic producers for the first time were able to compete in a fairly traded market. They very rapidly began hiring new shirts, bringing production back and ramping back up as fast as they possibly could.”
“Tariffs of certain sizes have different effects. Sometimes you have cases where a relatively small tariff forces producers out of the market. In other cases, you’ll have significant tariffs where the volume will come down, prices will moderate but the volume doesn’t necessarily disappear from the market.”
Asked if other exporters besides China might have been targets of an action: “Our goal was to address the major problem in the market at that time, and that was China.”