Who Makes Austria's Melamine?

In 2019, six countries sold the United States 33,366 of the 33,561 tonnes of melamine it imported. Six passports, 99.4% of the book.

Last year those same six sold it 2,448 tonnes.

Austria sold it 12,377.

"If the wall worked on every country the petition named, where is the melamine actually coming from?"

Friday's notice is what sent us looking. Commerce published the final results of its expedited second sunset review of the countervailing duty order on melamine from China, finding that revocation would bring the subsidies back at 154.00% for four named exporters, 156.90% for a fifth, and 154.58% for everyone else. The antidumping half goes on the record Monday, with margins likely to prevail "up to 363.31 percent."

Not one Chinese party showed up. The notice says Commerce "did not receive a substantive response from either the Government of China or a respondent interested party," which is why the review ran expedited at 120 days.

One company filed on the American side, and it is the same company that has filed every melamine petition this country has ever seen.

Cornerstone Built This Wall By Itself

Cornerstone Chemical Company runs the melamine unit at Waggaman, Louisiana, and it is the domestic industry. In this review it claimed interested-party status "as a manufacturer in the United States of the domestic like product," entered its notice of intent on June 12 and filed its substantive response on July 1. Nobody else on the domestic side appeared either, because there is nobody else.

Here is the wall it has built, order by order.

China, December 28 2015. Antidumping and countervailing, continued once already in July 2021, now headed for a second continuation.

Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and Trinidad and Tobago, January 31 2025. Dumping margins of 218.73% on LAT Nitrogen Piesteritz GmbH and 179.24% all-others for Germany, 127.69% on Mitsui Chemicals and 115.11% all-others for Japan, 72.16% on OCI Nitrogen B.V. and 53.50% all-others for the Netherlands, 146.85% on Methanol Holdings and 98.32% all-others for Trinidad.

Germany, Qatar and Trinidad and Tobago, same day, countervailing. 29.72%, 41.91% and 7.43%.

India, April 9 2025. Dumping at 632.74% on Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals and 513.28% all-others, both on adverse facts available, plus a 276.06% subsidy rate.

Footnote 16 of the January order reads, in full: "The petitioner is Cornerstone Chemical Company."