Vietnamese Fish Fillet Exporter’s Sole US Sale Not Representative for New Shipper Review, Trade Group Says
A Vietnamese frozen fish fillet exporter’s single U.S. sale wasn’t bona fide, the domestic trade group Catfish Farmers of America said Dec. 16 in a motion for judgment (Catfish Farmers of America v. U.S., CIT # 24-00126).
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In a highly redacted public brief, the domestic producer said the single sale by exporter Co May was useless for a new shipper review. The Commerce Department shouldn’t have relied on it, the trade group said. It also claimed the department’s method of analysis for the review was wrong.
In the past, Commerce has considered an exporter’s sales to other markets when determining whether a U.S. sale is typical of that exporter for purposes of a new shipper review, Catfish Farmers said. But the department declined to do so for the review in question, instead claiming that “different markets may have different price points,” it said.
But Commerce didn’t provide any explanation for that statement, nor for its “out-of-hand” refusal to consider Co May’s third-country sales in its typicality analysis, Catfish Farmers said. As a result, the review results should be remanded, the domestic producer said.
Commerce is also directed to consider the profitability of import resales in its typicality analyses, Catfish Farmers said, but the department failed to do so here.
The domestic producer alleged that Co May’s customer couldn’t resell the merchandise “at a price that captured both the base price and the antidumping duties charged at import, to say nothing of the other costs incurred in procuring and reselling the goods” -- which that customer failed to fully report, Catfish Farmers claimed.
The record also showed that Co May’s customer did ultimately resell to a specific party despite claiming otherwise, it said.