On Remand, Commerce Swaps Cohen's d Test for New 'Price Differences' Test for Paper Exporter
On remand, the Commerce Department determined Aug. 29 that it wouldn’t use the Cohen’s d test in its calculation of German paper exporter Koehler Paper SE’s antidumping duty margin, instead applying its new “price difference test” (Matra Americas v. United States, CIT # 21-00632).
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The department said it also applied partial facts available to the exporter’s reporting of its products’ static sensitivity characteristic.
The Court of International Trade remanded the department’s investigation determination regarding German thermal paper in February 2024. The government argued that the Cohen's d test was usable because Koehler’s U.S. sales data was a “complete population,” but the trade court rejected the argument as inadequately explained.
Following the remand order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in the case Marmen v. United States that Commerce may only use the Cohen’s d test on data that is normally distributed and “sufficiently numerous” (see 2504220030).
Because that isn’t the case regarding Koehler’s data, Commerce said it chose to use the new “price difference” test it developed in the wake of Marmen to determine whether to use the average-to-transaction price comparison method between an exporter’s U.S. and home markets.
The test, it explained, determines that a respondent’s U.S. prices differ significantly if its weighted average net price to a particular “purchaser, region or time period” in the U.S. is more than 2% higher or lower than the weighted average for the remaining purchasers, regions or time periods.
The department will then move on to the ratio test, which establishes the extent of the price differences by looking at the ratio of total sales that pass the price difference test. If more than a third of an exporter’s total U.S. sales pass the price difference test, it moves on to consider whether an average-to-average price comparison has a meaningfully different result compared with an average-to-transaction comparison.
If the dumping margin either changes by at least 25% or rises above the de minimis threshold based on the comparison method used, Commerce uses the average-to-transaction method.
Applying its process to Koehler, the department said that almost all of the exporter’s U.S. sales pass the price difference test, but that the exporter’s margin stayed the same regardless of whether an average-to-average or average-to-transaction method was used.
Commerce also explained that it used partial facts available for Koehler’s static sensitivity coding for some of its products. It said that it reopened the record to let the exporter retest its products, but that the exporter said it couldn’t, the products having already been sold. The department said Koehler had still participated to the best of its ability.
And it said it had continued to include accrued interest on unpaid antidumping duties in its calculation of Koehler’s normal value. The government brought its own case against Koehler in 2024 seeking nearly $200 million in duties, alleging Koehler tried to dodge them by spinning off part of its interests (see 2503270034).