WASHINGTON (July 2025) – On July 23, 2025, the Coalition of Freight Coupler Producers (CFCP) filed petitions requesting antidumping and countervailing duties to counter unfairly low-priced imports of freight rail couplers. CFCP filed the petitions with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) following significant volumes of unfairly priced imports of freight rail couplers from Czechia and India. The petitions allege that Czechia and India are dumping freight rail couplers in the United States and distorting the U.S. market. The petitions further allege that the Indian industry is receiving unfair subsidies, which further injure the American industry and its workers.
“Czechia and India’s use of unfair pricing is harming American companies and workers,” said Daniel B. Pickard, International Trade and National Security practice group leader at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney and lead counsel for CFCP. “The domestic industry is committed to opposing these unfair trade practices and ensuring that American manufacturing is able to compete on a level playing field.”
Antidumping duties aim to offset the amount a product is sold at less than fair value, or “dumped,” in the United States. The dumping margin is calculated by the Department of Commerce. Countervailing duties are intended to offset unfair subsidies that a foreign government provides in the production of a particular good. The ITC, an independent agency, determines whether the domestic industry is materially injured, or threatened with injury, as a result of the unfairly traded imports.
The entire investigative process will take approximately one year, with final determinations of dumping, subsidization, and injury likely occurring near the middle of 2026. Duties can, however, attach to imports of the freight rail couplers as of the time of the preliminary determinations in the investigations.
Led by Pickard, the Buchanan team also includes Milton Koch, Claire Webster, Natan Tubman, Brandon Custard, and Carson Easterling.
Buchanan has a team of international trade and national security attorneys ready to help U.S. manufacturers with U.S. trade remedy laws and trade policy. U.S. AD/CVD tariff laws are one of the only available tools to reestablish an even playing field for American companies and avoid lost sales and profits. Our eBook, Trade Remedy Investigations Handbook, shares details on how diverse domestic industries can take advantage of these laws – antidumping and countervailing duty investigations – to combat unfair foreign competition and ensure that the U.S. market is operating under fair and equal conditions.