Commerce Rejects Information on Turkish Duty Drawback Adjustment as Untimely
The Commerce Department rejected a submission from respondent Assan Aluminyum as untimely in its third remand results in a case on the antidumping duty investigation on common alloy aluminum sheet from Turkey at the Court of International Trade. Despite accepting the submission in its second remand results, the agency said on remand that the information in the submission didn't correct information from the company's earlier submission but rather was an "untimely effort by Assan to supplement its own prior questionnaire response" (Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT Consol. # 21-00246).
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The submission concerned Assan's claim for a duty drawback adjustment, which was rooted in Turkey's system of rebating import duties paid by Turkish manufacturers on inputs, called the Inward Processing Regime. Under this system, holders of Inward Processing Certificates (IPCs) can either get refunds of import duties when the certificate closes or the holder can pay no duties at the time of importation and submit a guarantee for the amount that's otherwise owed. Under both options, a certificate holder is liable for all import duties until it ships enough goods to close the IPC.
If a certificate fails to close, the Turkish government retroactively collects all customs duties. Commerce requires some indication the certificate was approved prior to granting duty drawback adjustments. In the present investigation, the agency applied the adjustment to all of Assan's U.S. sales, even though only some of them directly contributed to the receipt of duty exemptions.
In particular, only one IPC closed during the investigation period, yet Assan claimed drawback adjustments for three other IPCs that were open. On remand, Commerce reopened the record so Assan could identify its exports to the U.S. that are associated with the sole closed IPC.
However, in a June 6, 2024, submission, Assan identified three more IPCs it said closed in time for their corresponding sales to get drawback adjustments. The petitioner, the Aluminum Association Common Alloy Aluminum Sheet Trade Enforcement Working Group, responded that two of these IPCs didn't bestow any duty drawback benefit and that the third should be rejected, since it counts as "unsolicited new factual information." On June 20, 2024, Assan filed another submission, which the petitioner opposed as not actually responding to any of its objections and containing untimely new factual information. Commerce accepted the information and calculated adjustments for all three of the IPCs.
The trade court remanded the case for Commerce's failure to address whether the June 20 submission contained untimely information (see 2505220035). On remand, the agency took another look at the submission and found that it contained new factual information that didn't rebut, clarify or correct information submitted in response to the petitioner's comments, rejecting the information as untimely.
Ultimately, Commerce said the rejection of the information in the June 20 submission changes the adjustment for one of the IPCs. While the agency said it had enough information on the record to determine that the IPC was closed, it didn't have enough information to calculate the adjustment. Thus, the agency said it "adjusted Assan’s weighted-average dumping margin because of our inability to calculate an accurate duty drawback adjustment for" the IPC.
The result changes Assan's dumping margin from de minimis to 2.14% and the all-others rate from 13.56% to 4.94%.