The U.S. federal government's lead agency ruled that allegations that Korea-made washing machines and other products evaded U.S. import tariff are groundless.
According to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report on the 16th (local time), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) concluded that suspicions that the declared prices of home appliances imported into the United States were underreported are not true.
Earlier, Whirlpool, a home appliance company headquartered in the United States, said that an analysis of federal government data generated from import documents showed that, since June this year, the customs-declared prices of home appliances imported into the United States had plunged, and claimed that the declared prices were lowered through an "undervaluation" method (the act of entering an amount on documents that is lower than the actual price).
At the time, the companies Whirlpool singled out for tariff evasion were Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and GE Appliances, which used to be a U.S. company but is now owned by China's Haier.
Industry opinion largely held that these companies did not use an undervaluation method to evade tariff, but that simple data entry errors or duplicate tabulation errors were more likely. The competent agency, CBP, reached the same conclusion this time.
LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics did not immediately respond to WSJ's request for comment, and GE Appliances criticized Whirlpool, saying, "Any well-run corporations would understand the limitations of using this data."