Commerce Had Record Evidence to Calculate Per-Kilometer Shipping Costs, Tire Exporter Says
Chinese exporters led by Giti Tire Global Trading repeated Feb. 17 their claim that the Commerce Department should have taken distance into account when constructing boat freight costs in an antidumping duty review (see 2411050046), saying the government was misinterpreting the financial information provided by a surrogate (Giti Tire Global Trading v. U.S., CIT #24-00083).
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The exporters also insisted they hadn’t failed to exhaust their administrative remedies.
In its response to a cross-motion for summary judgment by the U.S. (see 2501070074), Giti pushed back against the government’s claim that Commerce relied on freight costs that “reflected a flat rate for shipping the specified size container” during the review. In fact, that information was “unambiguous” that the rates would vary based on the shipping destination, it claimed.
“For example, in August 2021, the rate to ship a 20 foot container ranged from $4,752.00 to Long Beach, CA to $6,860.00 to Charleston, SC,” it said.
And the exporter said that none of the sources cited by the U.S. in its opposition constituted real support for its claim that Commerce’s regular practice is to calculate inputs’ boat freight costs per-kilogram only. One of those sources included a prior 2020-2021 review of the same products, in which Giti also unsuccessfully raised this argument, Giti said. That was a “previous incorrect finding” that shouldn’t be used “to deny the appropriate correction in this case,” it said.
In turn, it claimed Commerce’s “actual practice,” calculating freight costs on a per-kilogram and per-kilometer basis, “is stated in multiple administrative reviews.” These include reviews of potassium permanganate from China and frozen fish fillets from Vietnam, it said.
Giti also said it hadn’t failed to exhaust its remedies because, when the time came to comment on the draft CBP liquidation instructions for the entry in question, “those instructions were correct.” It was only when the “very different” final liquidation instructions appeared in the Federal Register that Giti had any cause to push back.
Specifically, it said, the draft liquidation instructions ordered liquidation of Giti’s entry by a particular importer at one, lower rate and liquidation of any of Giti’s other products purchased by any other importers at the China-wide 76.46% rate. That was fine, because “there was only one importer of Giti-produced product” during the review period and it was the one the draft instructions targeted for the lower rate, Giti said. But the final liquidation instructions instead ordered all of Giti’s entries assessed at the China-wide rate because Giti hadn’t reported any U.S. sales in the U.S. sales database.
But that was because Giti had imported the merchandise but not yet sold it all to an unaffiliated purchaser during the review period, it said.
“Indeed, the ‘fix’ here is simple,” it said. “The Defendant simply needs to confirm that it will issue final CBP instructions the same as those issued in draft in this proceeding, and confirm that it will disregard the referenced language in the Federal Register notice.”