U.S. Trade Representative
Quartz Surface Products Safeguard Hearing
Testimony of Marty Davis

Good morning Chair DiPlacido and members of the Trade Policy Staff Committee. My name is Marty Davis. I am the Owner and Manager of Cambria. I am here because the domestic quartz industry has been seriously injured by a massive flood of imports and the recommendation that you make to the President will determine whether American quartz manufacturing and the thousands of jobs it represents have a genuine opportunity to recover.  It’s time for the President and the Administration to meet the moment–while the President has been noble and judicious in his negotiations, the time has passed for compromises or appeasements.

We are grateful for the hard work of the U.S. International Trade Commission and its recognition of the devastating impact of imports on our industry. However, the relief that they recommended does not go far enough. We need stronger relief. 

By providing strong relief, in particular a 50% tariff and a hard-cap quota of 141 million square feet, this Committee and President Trump have an opportunity to put the American economy, the American worker, and our national security first.  Strong relief for our domestic industry will spur an American revitalization throughout the quartz industry and the entire supply chain.  To be very clear, this case is a reshoring opportunity in an industry with huge demand and factories and workers primed and ready to crank up domestic production.  Today, we can drive a manufacturing renaissance without having any material impact on the American consumer or housing affordability.

Thank you for allowing me to testify, and thank you for your determination and commitment to FREE AND FAIR TRADE for the U.S. quartz surfaces industry. You have recognized the years of struggles that our industry has faced from wave after wave of unfairly traded imports. When I testified before the Commission in February, I explained the serious injury our domestic industry suffered from the global import surge.

After we filed antidumping and countervailing duty cases against unfairly traded imports from China in 2019, U.S. producers were investing heavily in American quartz manufacturing. Cambria alone invested more than $100 million to expand our Minnesota factory.

But almost immediately, foreign production shifted from China to other countries, with new production lines popping up in India, Turkey, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and elsewhere—often using Chinese equipment, Chinese companies, Chinese know-how, and U.S. importer relationships. As a result, the relief we received from illegal Chinese imports was very short-lived. This massive second wave of imports facilitated by transhipping and other evasion measures targeted the United States—the most sought-after building products market in the world by far.

That second wave devastated U.S. quartz surface manufacturing. Demand for quartz grew substantially, just as we expected, but domestic production and market share fell sharply. U.S. plants were idled or closed. American jobs disappeared. 

The Commission has now rightfully found that imports were a substantial cause of serious injury to our industry. The question now is whether the safeguard remedy will actually address that injury.

Cambria and many other quartz producers stand ready to reactivate expansion plans, invest in new capacity, and hire American workers. But to make that possible, we need strong relief we can count on.

This is an opportunity for the Committee and President Trump to take a stand and demonstrate an on-going support of American manufacturing and American supply chains.

The domestic industry is requesting a 50% tariff and a hard quota of 141 million square feet. Some of my fellow domestic producers today on this panel will share in greater detail why these levels of relief are needed.

To be sure, the relief we are seeking will support not only workers throughout our industry and our supply chain, our factory’s and the industry’s  continued expansion,  but it represents our commitment to why an America First Trump Trade Policy makes sense. 

But you will hear today from the same U.S. Importers who benefitted from decades of failed American trade policy that strong relief will somehow hurt American workers and the American economy.  

This Committee and the President already know that the entire business model of these multi-million and multi-billion-dollar U.S. Import companies demand and assure the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing and a cataclysmic relocation of U.S. jobs overseas. By skillfully leveraging unfair trading practices, oppressive labor practices, intellectual property theft, gamed currencies, and subsidies of foreign governments, these importers are the market for the producers that are wrongfully off-shoring American factories and stealing opportunity from good hardworking American workers.

An important reason President Trump was elected is that American workers trusted him to reject the lies of the corporate offshoring cabal and to stand up to China and other foreign governments manipulating the global trading system.

One of the most striking aspects of this case is the well-funded campaign that has been organized by major U.S. Import interests. The companies driving this opposition have become enormously wealthy importing products manufactured overseas. They did not build factories in Georgia. They did not build factories in Texas. They did not build factories in Minnesota.

They built global sourcing networks designed to maximize imports into the United States at the lowest price point possible, taking advantage of a global trading system that has been manipulated to benefit foreign importers and foreign nations. The majority of their investments in capital and employees were and remain, in foreign countries with foreign government partnerships. Now they have the audacity to portray themselves as defenders of American manufacturing and American fabricators.

The truth is that the flood of quartz imports is not just injuring domestic slab producers—it is rapidly and increasingly displacing the vital and valued work performed by sophisticated, high quality, professional U.S. fabricators.  Strong safeguard measures will fully address the surge of imports of pre-fabricated quartz that injure our entire domestic quartz ecosystem.

We also expect to hear today that strong relief will destroy housing affordability.  This is a total bait and switch used by Importers, U.S. Assembly apparatus and foreign government propaganda machines.  The idea that quartz safeguards are going to dramatically change the price of a new home is just not based in reality.

The reality is that housing affordability today is driven primarily by the lack of supply, land costs, labor costs, financing costs, insurance costs, permitting costs, and major government regulatory burdens – not by the price of a countertop.

Countertops represent a tiny fraction of total home construction costs. Roughly 30% of the cost of a new home comes from building products – and only 7% of building products are imported, such that only 2% of the cost of a new home comes from any imported building product. The countertop in a home averages less than 1.5% of the cost of a new home, and much of that cost is domestically derived by fabrication and installation.  In fact, the Commission determined that home prices would only be impacted by about $183 by the 50% tariffs we are requesting.  $183.  It’s fair to say that what we are talking about today is not critical to addressing affordability in the United States. But it is absolutely critical to the health of American manufacturing and American workers, the very people who need jobs to be able to re-invest in the U.S. including being able to afford a home.

The supposed savings from cheap imports are spread thinly across millions of transactions and barely noticed by consumers, while the damage to domestic manufacturing is concentrated, severe, and irreversible. 

Who really takes the so-called savings from cheap imports is the importer and the foreign governments, especially China, who strategically overtake America through orchestrated trade fraud schemes. 

We are witnessing the destruction of hundreds of millions of dollars of American investment - and this is exactly why the Safeguard remedy exists. Caesarstone has closed its $100 million factory in Georgia. Guidoni is thinking about closing its $100 million factory in Georgia. LX’s facility is under great capacity pressure, much like the entire industry. These are not statistics on a spreadsheet. These are factories, workers, families, suppliers, and communities. That is what serious injury looks like, and that is precisely why strong safeguard relief is needed.

Cambria is ready to invest. We are ready to hire. We are ready to expand. We are ready to build additional capacity in the United States. Additionally, we support the administration efforts, as it relates to making on-shoring agreements with foreign companies that want to invest in America, and build US manufacturing operations to supply our markets. We are all ready to buy more raw materials from our domestic suppliers to support this increased production. 

But we cannot do that if the market remains distorted. We need relief that is meaningful, enforceable, and that gives American manufacturers a real opportunity to compete.

I cannot thank you enough for this opportunity to testify in front of you and the tremendous amount of work that you have devoted to these critical issues. Thank you for your attention to this matter! I look forward to answering your questions.