By Terri Wu
Bradford Muller, vice president of a U.S. pipe company, thought that relief was finally on its way when the pipe and fitting manufacturing industry won a trade case against Chinese companies in 2018.
The Commerce Department imposed anti-dumping duties on Chinese pipe exporters because their ultra-low prices were harming the U.S. domestic industry.
The leadership of Charlotte Pipe and Foundry believed that the new high tariff rates—up to 360 percent—would deter Chinese producers, prompting them to shift to other products not subject to anti-dumping orders.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, transshipments to avoid the tariffs began almost immediately.
The flood of pipes from China returned, only with an additional stop at a third country—mainly Malaysia or Cambodia in Charlotte Pipe’s case—without significant value being added to the manufacturing process in those countries.
It was then that Muller learned a lesson: This would be a long fight.
Fast forward to today, and the company is still fighting against the Chinese regime’s tariff evasion.
“We’ve been in business for 124 years, and you don’t stay around that long if you’re not determined and willing to fight and compete,” Muller recently told The Epoch Times.
“We can compete on a level playing field. That’s all we’re asking for, is everybody to play fair.”
Charlotte Pipe intends to take matters into its own hands.
The private sector isn’t able to seek immediate injunctions on transshipments in the federal courts. Instead, it has to first file allegations of trade violations with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and wait for its determination. Muller wants to change this, and he’s pushing for legislation to do just that.
In the meantime, the political climate is more favorable to domestic producers, as the second Trump administration works to boost domestic manufacturing.
As a member of the Industry Trade Advisory Committee on steel, Muller said he attends weekly committee calls with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).
Industrial representatives receive updates on trade negotiations and have an opportunity to “provide input in real time on a weekly basis” about what they see in the field and how their businesses are harmed, Muller said.
He said he saw a “totally different mindset … even from Trump’s first term” at the USTR and other government agencies regarding the level of engagement in trade with private businesses.
The current administration is also increasing the penalty for tariff evasion.
On July 31, the White House issued an executive order announcing a 40 percent additional tariff on any transshipment of goods. It went into effect on Aug. 7.
Muller called the transshipment tariff a “welcome policy development,” but added that “enforcement is key.”
The USTR did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Whac-A-Mole’
Based in North Carolina, Charlotte Pipe is a top maker of pipes and fittings for commercial and residential plumbing systems. The company touts its “100 percent” U.S.-based production.
Muller said his company, and the entire industry, has been in a trade war with China since the communist regime joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
He said his company has fought Chinese exporters on three fronts: technical issues such as product standards, quality, and price.
Competing on price against Chinese companies that engaged in unfair trade practices was unsustainable. In the early 2010s, the company began consulting with trade lawyers to defend its livelihood through the courts. It was not until the first Trump administration that Muller saw hope for a winnable case.
When Chinese exporters resorted to transshipment to evade the anti-dumping duties, the industry went after them.
The Cast Iron Soil Pipe Institute, a trade organization, filed 10 successful allegations of transshipment with the CBP. However, in response, the Chinese dissolved their shell companies to avoid penalties and started new ones to continue evading tariffs.
Under the Enforce and Protect Act, which is a component of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, the CBP cannot initiate investigations on its own. It relies on a private business to file an allegation and commits to issuing findings within 300 days.
However, that timeline is too long for a U.S. manufacturer to benefit from any remedy for a confirmed transshipment. In addition, it has to bear the cost of hiring trade lawyers to file the allegation.
According to Muller, few U.S. producers undergo the procedure precisely because of the high legal costs and the lack of return on investment. Meanwhile, transshipment of Chinese goods has become commonplace.
Over the past 10 years, the CBP has completed 405 investigations under the Enforce and Protect Act; nearly 95 percent of them were transshipment cases.
And two-thirds of the investigations involve China as the country of origin. The top countries used for transshipment include Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Mexico, and Vietnam.
In one of the investigations into pipe transshipments, in July 2020, Department of Homeland Security officials visited an exporter’s warehouse in Cambodia and found no evidence of production. The pipe machines were “unused, dry, and covered in spider webs,” the CBP determination reads. In addition, workers were touching up the yellow paint on the fittings, some of which were in boxes marked “made in China” and some “made in Cambodia.”
In this particular case, the CBP determined that the Cambodian company was used by a U.S. importer—under its Chinese owner, identified as “Ms. Li” in court documents—to transship the Chinese-origin pipes. Later, during Ms. Li’s unsuccessful appeal of another transshipment case, it was revealed that she had a group of companies that used the same warehouse in Cambodia to export Chinese pipes, and she created new entities upon closing old ones to evade transshipment penalties, according to the opinion of the U.S. Court of International Trade.
“It just turns into a game of Whac-A-Mole,” Kadin Asbery, communications director for Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.), told The Epoch Times.
Public–Private Partnership on Enforcement
Bost reintroduced a bipartisan bill, the Fighting Trade Cheats Act of 2025, which would allow a private company to initiate a lawsuit against a foreign exporter for alleged trade violations. The proposed legislation allows the U.S. government to take over the case on behalf of the American company.
Such a process would circumvent the current months-to-a-year delay on CBP investigations, Asbery said.
The bill, currently before the House Committee on Ways and Means, would increase the penalty for trade violators to three times the damage incurred by the U.S. business. Another penalty would strip the violator of its ability to import similar products into the United States.
Asbery said the bill could serve as a complement to Trump’s 40 percent transshipment tariff, as it would cement penalties for trade violators in law, which can’t be changed if a future administration reverses Trump’s tariffs.
As higher tariffs incentivize evasions such as transshipment, the Trump administration has stepped up its enforcement efforts.
In July, the Department of Justice established a new unit to focus on prosecuting tariff evasion. In an internal memo issued in May, Matthew R. Galeotti, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, identified trade and customs fraud as a top enforcement priority.
Muller said he thinks that the private sector must aid government efforts. He said he hopes that the bill will be pulled into a broader domestic manufacturing trade protection package.
The bill would “really make a difference for U.S. manufacturers that, frankly, are still engaged in this trade war,” Muller said.
Although relief has been elusive, he remains undeterred.
“The next highlight will be when we get the proper tools to address the problem for good,” Muller said.
