Your Three Percent Xanthan Deposit Was Off by Forty-Nine Points

Fufeng's dumping margin on xanthan gum for the 2020-2021 period sat at 17.36 percent for three years and three months.

In May it became zero.

What moved it was a coal line.

The Court of International Trade sent Commerce back twice on which Harmonized System subheading to use when valuing the coal Fufeng burns, and on the second remand Commerce swapped 2701.12.9000 for 2701.19. That one substitution took the margin to 0.00 percent on Commerce's own arithmetic.

The court sustained it on May 12.

Hold onto that, because the next preliminary in the same case went on public inspection at 8:45 this morning and publishes tomorrow.

Deosen Biochemical (Ordos) at 70.21 percent. Fufeng at 51.82. Jianlong, which was not individually examined, at 56.20.

"If the rate I posted at the border has no relationship to the rate I get assessed, what exactly was I budgeting?"

Four numbers, one exporter

The review covers entries made between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025. Work out what an importer of Fufeng-supplied xanthan actually posted on those entries and you get a number nobody would recognize from this morning's notice (chart below).

The 2021-2022 final results set Fufeng's cash deposit at 2.90 percent on February 6, 2024, and deposit rates run until the next final results replace them. The next ones landed May 27, 2025, eleven months into the review period, and took Fufeng to 0.00.

So entries made on 330 of the review period's 365 days posted 2.90 percent. The last 35 days posted nothing at all.