CVD Respondent Contests Commerce's Rejection of 30-Minutes-Late Submissions
The Court of International Trade should rule against the Commerce Department's move to reject questionnaire responses submitted 30 minutes late, antidumping respondent Zhejiang Zhouli Industrial argued in a July 21 complaint. Explaining the circumstances of the late submission, Zhouli said the rejection was a "drastic measure that was not warranted" and resulted in an adverse facts available rate. It urged the court to find the rejection to be an abuse of discretion (Zhejiang Zhouli v. U.S., CIT #22-00177).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Zhouli served as a mandatory respondent in a case concerning the countervailing duty investigation into walk-behind snow throwers and parts thereof from China. The deadline was Oct. 18 to submit all the questionnaire responses after Commerce issued a questionnaire in place of on-site verification given COVID-19 travel restrictions. Counsel for Zhouli, though, mistakenly thought the deadline was Oct. 19. Alerted to this mistake "shortly before" the Oct. 18 5 p.m. deadline, the attorney contacted the Commerce program manager and left a message requesting Commerce accept the filing "which would be made within the next hour." Counsel for Zhouli filed all the submissions within 30 minutes of the 5 p.m. Oct. 18, the complaint said.
Commerce rejected the submissions for being late and because no extension request was filed. Zhouli appealed, arguing that rejection of the responses was an extreme measure since the filings were only 30 minutes late. The respondent again faced rejection from the agency. The result was an AFA rate of 203.06% -- a number more than 15 times the 12.86% rate found in the investigation's preliminary determination, the complaint said.
The court should find that Commerce's rejection of the verification responses was "an abuse of administrative discretion, was unsupported by substantial evidence in the administrative record and was otherwise not in accordance with law," the complaint said.