Trade Issue : Phone Booth--Antique or Steel Import?

A plan to sell Americans the red telephone booths that have been fixtures on the streets of London has become enmeshed in a trade controversy.

U.S. Customs Service agents insist that the sturdy, 1,500-pound cast-iron booths should be classified as fabricated steel in a category called “other other” in customs documents and counted against the European quota of steel allowed in the United States.

“We think it’s a bit absurd, extraordinary. There’s not nearly enough quota to go around,” said Derek J. Plumbly, a commercial officer at the British Embassy.

New Papers Necessary

The issue arose when customs agents in Los Angeles refused to allow two of the telephone boxes into the country without a certificate showing that they were part of the European steel quota. The British refused to issue the certificate.

It’s sold as an ornament. It’s made of cast iron, wood and glass. It’s an antique,” Plumbly said.

Last week, a Customs Service spokesman called the Los Angeles holdup “a paper work foul-up,” and said he expected that the two telephone boxes being held there will be released as soon as the London shipper sends over new papers. But Plumbly said the British government will not issue a certificate that counts the telephone boxes against the nation’s steel quota.

“We don’t have much license left for fabricated structures, and a couple of phone boxes could use it all up,” Plumbly said. Besides, he added, “it’s absurd they should be classified that way.”

He said the London company that is selling the boxes here, London Telephone Box Co., had heard nothing as of last week to indicate that the booths in Los Angeles would be released shortly.

“They are frantic,” he said. “The company said that if the issue isn’t resolved quickly, it will go out of business.”

The company began buying the colorful boxes when British Telecom decided to replace them with more mundane plastic booths imported from the United States.

London Telephone Box Co. was formed to tap a market among Americans eager to have bits of Britain as ornaments in their gardens or living rooms. The company bought all 30,000 of the sturdy red booths, which will be taken off London streets during the next seven years.

The company hoped to sell 20,000 of them in the United States for as much as $3,000 each.

The boxes are made of cast iron, wood and glass, although for customs purposes the chief component--cast iron--is called fabricated steel.

U.S. trade officials said fabricated steel is included in the quotas to prevent importers from evading restrictions by making minor changes to structural steel and slipping it into the country as a fabricated product.