Melamine Petitioner Says Different PMS Existed in Both Investigated Country and Surrogate
In its motion for judgment July 25, petitioner Cornerstone Chemical Co. again argued (see 2502070029) that Turkey was the wrong surrogate selection for a Commerce Department investigation on melamine from Qatar because of different particular market situations that existed in both Turkey and Qatar (Cornerstone Chemical Co. v. United States, CIT # 25-00005).
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First, it said, Turkey was experiencing a sales-based particular market situation -- unfairly traded Chinese-origin melamine imports were “dominat[ing] and distort[ing]” the Turkish market to such an extent that the country’s prices were being depressed.
It noted that Commerce had accepted the fact that Chinese melamine imports were “dominant” in Turkey. The department said instead in its determination only that there wasn’t adequate evidence that the Chinese imports were distorting the Turkish market.
But, in doing so, it failed to acknowledge that the Chinese imports were unfairly traded, the petitioner said. It said Chinese melamine was being subsidized “at rates of at least 154 percent.” Combined with the proportion of the market held by Chinese melamine, Cornerstone said, that statistic was “strong evidence of a distorted market” in Turkey.
“After all, if most of a country’s demand for a product is supplied by imported merchandise that receives very significant unfair subsidies, then it is not credible to conclude that prices in that country are market-determined and viable for use in calculating a fair value benchmark,” it said.
The department also dismissed evidence that the EU and India also have antidumping duty orders on melamine from China, demonstrating a more global concern about the “unfairly traded” product, Cornerstone claimed. Instead, Commerce “frame[d] the relevant issue as being whether ‘melamine from Qatar is dumped in another country,’ when the immediate question is instead whether melamine from China distorted the Turkish market,” it said.
It said that, as a result, Commerce hadn’t considered contradictory evidence, so its determination should be remanded.
Cornerstone also argued the department should have constructed a value for melamine from Qatar rather than relying on its Turkish surrogate, as Qatar was also separately experiencing a cost-based particular market situation (PMS), during the review period, for natural gas.
The petitioner claimed that Commerce determined that “a government entity’s natural gas prices to unaffiliated customers” was the equivalent of market prices when it decided not to adjust the Qatari mandatory respondents’ prices. This, however, had “[n]o reasonable basis,” especially as Commerce had actually found a PMS existed regarding Qatari natural gas, it said.
It explained that, during the review, Commerce chose to collapse a melamine producer, input supplier and exporter into one entity that would serve as a mandatory respondent. That input supplier, QAFCO, received its natural gas from QatarEnergy, with which it was affiliated, Cornerstone claimed.
Commerce calculated a market price for those natural gas purchases using “QatarEnergy’s sales to unaffiliated customers,” Cornerstone said. But QatarEnergy was “100-percent owned” by the Qatari government, it said.
This was shown by the fact that QatarEnergy’s natural gas sales to unaffiliated customers were lower than its natural gas sales to QAFCO, even though Commerce itself found that QAFCO’s purchase prices for the input were “significantly lower” than the benchmarks Cornerstone provided during the investigation, the petitioner said.