Lynch applauds Commerce ruling on Goss

Gov. John Lynch Thursday praised the U.S. Department of Commerce’s reaffirmation of its antidumping duty on Tokyo Kikai Seisakush.

The firm, which has been told to pay a surcharge of 59.67 percent as a penalty, is a manufacturer of large newspaper printing presses and a major competitor of Goss International, which employs some 1,000 people at its plants in Dover and Durham in New Hampshire.

“American companies and workers can compete anywhere in the world when the playing field is level, but that was not occurring in this case. I applaud the Secretary of Commerce for taking action to reinstate the anti-dumping order against TKS, and for demonstrating that it will act to enforce trade laws and to make sure U.S. companies can compete fairly,” Lynch said. “The Department of Commerce recognized that these jobs should not be jeopardized because of unfair trade practices.”

Lynch had written U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez on Feb. 24 to urge him to take strong action after the department had already concluded in a preliminary decision that TKS engaged in a series of deceptive acts to hide its dumping of products at below-market prices.

The department’s International Trade Administration last year launched a “changed circumstances review” to determine whether it should reassess a duty first issued against TKS in 1996 and revoked six years later.

At question was whether TKS violated a Commerce Department provision that calls for a company to pass three consecutive administrative reviews without posting any dumping margins, a stipulation with which TKS said it complied.

By enforcing U.S. trade laws, the Department of Commerce “is upholding the principles of fair, rules-based international trade and a level playing field for all manufacturers,” Goss Chief Executive Officer Bob Brown told the trade publication Newspapers & Technology. – JEFF FEINGOLD