AD Petitioner, Respondent Drop Suits on AD Investigation on Shopping Bags
Antidumping duty petitioner Coalition for Fair Trade in Shopping Bags and exporter Finieco Industria e Comercio de Embalagens dropped their lawsuits on the antidumping duty investigation on paper shopping bags from Portugal, filing a stipulation of dismissal on Dec. 23. The coalition argued that the Commerce Department failed to treat Finieco's fixed payments to sales employees as indirect selling expenses (see 2409120037) (Coalition for Fair Trade in Shopping Bags v. U.S., CIT # 24-00158) (Finieco Industria e Comercio de Embalagens v. U.S., CIT # 24-00160).
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The petitioner said Finieco paid its Portugal staff in part by making certain fixed payments that weren't directly tied to the value of each employee's home market sales. Nevertheless, the respondent reported the expenses as "fixed commissions." Since the payments weren't directly tied to individual sales, "they should not have been treated as commissions or any type of direct selling expense," the petitioner said in its complaint.
In its complaint, Finieco argued that Commerce erred in treating fees it paid to a U.S. company as a direct expense (see 2409180009). The exporter said that for many of its U.S. sales, it paid an "unaffiliated U.S. company a fee to perform various administrative tasks," reporting the expenses as U.S. commissions but telling the agency they should be treated as indirect selling expenses since they were not related to selling merchandise and not tied directly to specific sales.