Antidumping and countervailing duties: Commerce, CBP, and the EAPA evasion process

Antidumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) are a reliably tested exam topic because they involve three different federal actors doing three different jobs, and the exam likes to test whether you know which agency does what. This guide separates the roles cleanly: who decides the rate, who decides injury, and what CBP actually does at the port, then covers how CBP investigates suspected evasion of an AD/CVD order under the Enforce and Protect Act. For how AD/CVD interacts with liquidation timing, see the liquidation and duty relief guide; for the broker’s own duty-of-care exposure, see broker compliance.

What is the difference between antidumping and countervailing duty?

Both are remedies against unfairly priced imports, but they respond to different unfair practices:

• Antidumping duty (AD), under 19 USC 1673, applies when foreign merchandise is being, or is likely to be, sold in the United States “at less than its fair value,” meaning the U.S. price is below the price the same goods sell for in the home market (or a constructed value). The duty equals the dumping margin, the gap between normal value and U.S. price.
• Countervailing duty (CVD), under the parallel statute 19 USC 1671, applies when a foreign government provides a countervailable subsidy to the production, manufacture, or export of merchandise. The duty equals the amount of the subsidy.

Both remedies require a finding of injury to a domestic industry before a duty order can issue. Neither is a penalty for wrongdoing by the importer; both are trade remedies aimed at the imported merchandise itself, which is why the duty attaches to the goods regardless of the importer’s knowledge or intent.

Who decides what: Commerce, the ITC, and CBP

This three-way split is the single most tested structural fact in this category:

Agency	Role
Department of Commerce (the “administering authority” in the statute)	Determines whether merchandise is sold at less than fair value (AD) or benefits from a countervailable subsidy (CVD), and calculates the margin or subsidy rate
International Trade Commission (ITC)	Determines whether a U.S. industry is materially injured, threatened with material injury, or whether establishment of an industry is materially retarded, by the dumped or subsidized imports
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)	Administers and enforces the order at the border: suspends liquidation of entries of covered merchandise, collects cash deposits at the rate Commerce sets, and liquidates entries at the final assessed rate once Commerce completes its review

Under 19 USC 1673, an antidumping duty is imposed only when both the Commerce less-than-fair-value determination and the ITC material-injury determination are affirmative. CBP has no role in setting the rate or finding injury: its job starts once an order is in place, and it is purely administrative and enforcement-focused from that point. A classic wrong answer on this topic assigns CBP a rate-setting or injury-finding role it does not have.

How does CBP actually collect the duty at entry?

Once an AD/CVD order is in effect, CBP requires a cash deposit at the rate Commerce has set for that exporter (or the “all others” rate) at the time of entry, and it suspends liquidation of the entry rather than liquidating it at the standard timeline. That entry stays suspended, sometimes for years, until Commerce completes an administrative review and issues final liquidation instructions to CBP, at which point CBP liquidates the entry at the final rate, refunding any deposit collected above the final rate or billing for any shortfall. This suspension mechanism is why AD/CVD entries are a recurring exception to the standard liquidation timelines covered in the liquidation and duty relief guide.

What happens when an importer is suspected of evading an AD/CVD order?

CBP investigates suspected evasion, meaning entry of covered merchandise through false statements, misclassification, or transshipment to avoid AD/CVD duties, under the Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA), codified in 19 CFR Part 165. The process runs on exact, testable deadlines:

• Initiation. Any interested party may file an allegation. CBP must decide whether to initiate an investigation within 15 business days of receiving a properly filed allegation (19 CFR 165.15).
• Interim measures. If CBP finds a reasonable suspicion of evasion, it may impose interim measures within 90 days of initiating the investigation (19 CFR 165.24). These include suspending liquidation of unliquidated entries of the covered merchandise entered on or after the initiation date, and may include requiring a single transaction bond, additional security, or a cash deposit. CBP must notify the parties within 5 business days of taking interim measures.
• Final determination. CBP must issue its determination no later than 300 calendar days after initiating the investigation (19 CFR 165.22), extendable by up to 60 more calendar days (360 total) for extraordinarily complicated cases involving complex transactions, novel legal issues, or multiple parties.
• Consequences of an affirmative evasion finding. If CBP determines evasion occurred, it applies the AD/CVD rate to the covered entries, extends the interim measures, refers the matter for possible additional enforcement, and may refer the case for criminal investigation where warranted.

EAPA gives CBP a dedicated administrative track to chase transshipment and misclassification schemes specifically built to dodge an AD/CVD order, distinct from the general 1592 penalty process covered in the penalties and prior disclosure guide, though both can apply to the same underlying conduct.

How this shows up on the exam

AD/CVD questions most often test the three-agency division of labor (who decides the margin, who decides injury, who collects at the border) and the EAPA deadlines (15 business days to initiate, 90 days to interim measures, 300 days to a determination). A dependable method: read the question for which stage of the process it describes, then match the actor and the deadline rather than guessing from general customs knowledge. Drill the citation lookups for Parts 165 and the AD/CVD structural entries in the navigation trainer and the corpus map, and test recall in the free practice test.

Sources: 19 USC 1673 (imposition of antidumping duties) and 19 USC 1671 (countervailing duties); 19 CFR Part 165 (Enforce and Protect Act investigations of evasion), sections 165.15, 165.22, and 165.24, as published on the Legal Information Institute mirror of the U.S. Code and CFR (law.cornell.edu). Reviewed 2026-07-29. AD/CVD orders, rates, and EAPA procedural rules change; confirm the current order and the current text of Part 165 before relying on any figure here.