Resolute Forest Products Inc. (NYSE: RFP) (TSX: RFP) responds to misleading media statements by third parties regarding the U.S. Department of Commerce’s final order for countervailing duties on supercalendered paper from Canada.
Contrary to those misleading media statements, the Department of Commerce found countervailable subsidies during its investigation only at the Port Hawkesbury mill in Nova Scotia. The Department did not find countervailable subsidies to the manufacture, production or export of supercalendered paper by Resolute Forest Products.
As Resolute has previously disclosed, the Department imposed cash deposit requirements for estimated countervailing duties on Resolute based on a new interpretive rule applied to Resolute retroactively and imposed a punitive 17.87% rate not derived from any subsidy amount found to have been received by Resolute. Resolute believes that, through proceedings before NAFTA and WTO tribunals, the punitive actions will be found unlawful, confirming that the Department of Commerce did not find Resolute’s exports tothe United States to be subsidized.