Bridgestone Says It Fully Complied With Verification, Didn't Deserve AFA Rate
Tire exporter Bridgestone, seeking judgment in its case challenging use of total adverse facts available in a Thai tires antidumping duty investigation, said Sept. 5 that the Commerce Department “repeatedly denied” the existence of provably reliable documents Bridgestone provided it at verification and then made “questionable representations” to the Court of International Trade (see 2503200048) (Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations v. United States, CIT # 24-00263).
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The case already has seen some conflict in the trade court. In March, the U.S. asked CIT to consolidate it with another brought by the investigation’s petitioner, the United Steelworkers labor union (see 2503060053 and 2503260073).
Then, in July, Bridgestone was successful in its request -- over U.S. opposition -- to add three documents to the record CIT Judge Gary Katzmann decided were necessary as evidence as to whether Commerce had been wrong to reject them earlier (see 2507030030).
In its motion for judgment, Bridgestone said it was hit with an AFA 48.39% AD rate, up from zero percent, for allegedly failing to provide certain information on verification: a proper reconciliation of sales between Bridgestone and two affiliates and data on its affiliated reseller locations and rebates. Commerce also said it resorted to AFA due to other “cumulative minor errors,” the exporter said.
The exporter argued that it had provided the information requested. But Commerce “repeatedly denied the existence of these documents, stubbornly refused to consider the verified information in reaching its determination, and subsequently submitted affidavits to the Court baselessly recasting the alleged non-cooperation as a procedural decision by Commerce,” it said.
Commerce claimed that Bridgestone had failed to provide a reconciliation of accounts receivable for sales from Bridgestone to its two affiliates’ 11 stores. But the department’s verifiers only asked for accounts receivable reports for those stores, the exporter said, not reconciliations.
“Bridgestone’s counsel retains a picture of the common board, taken during the verification, describing this request simply as ‘A/R’ for the 11 specific locations,” it said.
It claimed it provided its reports, not for all 11 stores, but for the two affiliates, “and remained available for questions throughout the verification.” It noted that “A/R reports do not, as a matter of general practice, include every possible location associated with a customer, particularly where those locations have no unpaid balances."
But the reports were rejected because, Bridgestone said it was told at the time, “the company official who prepared the reports was not available at that precise moment,” namely at 3:30 p.m. on the last day of verification. And Commerce only claimed after the verification that the reports were rejected because they provided an “incomplete” reconciliation, it said.
Regarding the allegedly missing data on affiliated reseller locations and rebates, Bridgestone said Commerce had actually reviewed the data, then later claimed it hadn’t.
“Bridgestone provided Commerce with full access to its rebate accounting system, sorted and summed the data in any and all of the various ways that Commerce requested, and had no reason at verification to believe Commerce had even mistakenly identified what it thought to be a discrepancy,” it said. “Commerce examined comprehensive reconciling data pertaining to rebates, and then elected not to include any of these data on the record.”
The exporter also said that the department partly based its AFA decision on numerous small mistakes that “consisted of clerical errors that could easily be addressed and did not amount to any information gap on the record.” For example, it said, Commerce cited “incorrect cell references in Excel formulas or calculation mistakes due to misaligned numbers” in Bridgestone’s expense calculation worksheets.
But the department didn’t examine each error separately in its final decision memo, it said. It called the errors immaterial, and it said the law doesn’t require “flawless perfection” from its respondents.