AD Respondent Challenges Surrogate Value Pick in AD Investigation on Vanillin
Antidumping duty respondent Jiangxi Brother Pharmaceutical on Sept. 11 filed a complaint at the Court of International Trade to contest the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on vanillin from China. The respondent challenged Commerce's "calculation of the surrogate value for the by-product Hydroquinone," selection of the financial statements used as the basis for the financial ratios used in the surrogate value calculation, and the use of the Cohen's d test to detect "masked" dumping (Jiangxi Brother Pharmaceutical Co. v. United States, CIT # 25-00187).
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Regarding the surrogate value for Hydroquinone, Brother said Commerce erred by using an "aberrant value" and "ignored multiple data points which were all in agreement for a non-aberrant value."
For the selection of financial statements, the respondent said the agency shouldn't use "financial statements for industries which are not related to the industry of the company for which surrogate values are being calculated." The selected statements were taken from a mining company and not a fine chemical manufacturer, and the "production of fine chemicals is dissimilar to participation in the mining industry including the extraction of minerals from the ground," Brother said.
The respondent also noted that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently struck down Commerce's use of the Cohen's d test in its efforts to detect masked dumping. Thus, the use of the test in the present investigation was unlawful, the company said.