Newsprint producer hopes U.S. trade office will overturn duties.

North America’s largest newsprint producer hopes rare bipartisan political support in the United States will convince the U.S. International Trade Commission to overturn final import duties announced Thursday.

The U.S. gave most Canadian newsprint producers a reprieve by lowering final anti-dumping and countervailing duties on uncoated groundwood, a category that includes newsprint and book grade paper, in its final determination.

The move comes after several U.S. businesses and politicians from both major parties complained the tax on Canadian newsprint would threaten the struggling newspaper industry.

Resolute Forest Products CEO Yves Laflamme said he hopes the commission will reject the Commerce Department’s determination, just as it did in January when the panel sided with Bombardier against U.S. aerospace giant Boeing over the CSeries commercial jet that Airbus now controls and has renamed.

Scores of politicians have pressed the independent agency to quash the duties to save newsprint mills and newspaper industry jobs, Laflamme said.

“It’s not about helping the Canadian industry, it’s about saving the newspaper industry,” he said, noting the duties are passed along to publishers through higher prices. “It’s just going to kill that business faster than it is right now.”

The commission is to decide in September whether the complainant, Washington-based

North Pacific Paper Co., suffered harm.

Under the Commerce Department’s final determination, B.C.-based Catalyst Paper Corp. still faces a sizable total 20.26-per-cent tariff, but that’s down from 28.25 per cent imposed earlier in the year during the preliminary phase.

The company’s antidumping rate was decreased to 16.88 per cent from 22.16, and its countervailing duty (CVD) was lowered to 3.38 per cent from 6.09 per cent.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a release that no other Canadian uncoated groundwood producer will have to pay anti-dumping tariffs because of the unique facts of the department’s investigation and arguments made by interested parties.

Montreal-based Kruger’s CVD rate was lowered slightly to 9.53 per cent but the final rates for Resolute, White Birch Paper and other producers increased.

Resolute’s countervailing tariff increased to 9.81 per cent from 4.42 per cent, White Birch was 0.82 from 0.65 per cent and all others have risen to 8.54 per cent from 6.53 per cent.