Exporter Opposes Consolidation of Cases Contesting Thai Tires Investigation Determination
Exporter Bridgestone Americas Tires opposed March 25 the U.S. motion to consolidate two cases regarding the antidumping duty investigation on truck and bus tires from Thailand (see 2503060053) (Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations v. United States, CIT # 24-00263).
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Bridgestone said its case shares “common nexus of law, or fact” with another brought by petitioner United Steel, Paper and Forestry against the investigation’s other mandatory respondent, Prinx Chengshan Tire (see 2502070071).
It said the “potential overlap” between the cases was, at most, the impact on the all-others rate of recalculating both exporters’ margins.
“Defendant claims that having to perform this calculation, which consists of averaging two number[s] together, would create an undue burden,” it said. “This burden, overstated as it is, would not even land on the Court but on the Department of Commerce.”
And it said it was “unclear" what United Steel “hopes” to achieve in its case against Prinx, considering the fact that the petitioner had been successful, in the administrative proceeding, in having Prinx’s rate raised from de minimis to “over 12 percent.”
It also said the U.S. should have moved to dismiss the case against Prinx for the petitioner’s “failure to name Prinx or their counsel in the Summons, as parties to be served notice that an action against their interest had commenced.” Because of that, it said, the U.S. "is left defending the agency’s interpretation of that company’s data without the assistance of the company itself."
“Whether the Defendant moves to dismiss or the error is permitted to be belatedly cured should not matter to Bridgestone, but the Defendant’s insistence on consolidation forces our hand,” it said.
It added that United Steel’s suit against Prinx began long after Bridgestone’s own suit, and that allowing the consolidation would continue to delay Bridgestone’s case unfairly. It noted that its case had already been delayed because the U.S. had sought an extension for filing the administrative record, “which by necessity does not correspond to the record filed here with respect to the documents required to be provided under Rule 73.2(b)(1).”
Too much delay in Bridgestone’s case would have public policy impacts, since “Bridgestone is the largest supplier and distributor of tires in the United States," it said.
It characterized itself as a “responsible market player,” and said that the only reason “Commerce was able to raise Bridgestone’s margin from ZERO to a barely-above-de-minimis rate of 2.35% was through the application of partial adverse inferences, due to inconsistencies in the reporting of U.S. customer zip codes (a field not used in the calculation of U.S. price).”