Commerce Right to Find Exporter Circumvented Wire Cable Orders, Producer Says
Domestic producer Encore Wire Corp. joined the United States in opposing a Vietnamese wire cable exporter’s challenge to the use of adverse facts available in its circumvention inquiry (Tanghenam Electric Wire & Cable Co. v. United States, CIT # 25-00049).
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The U.S. told the Court of International Trade in September that AFA was warranted for “systemic” discrepancies the Commerce Department discovered in the input country-of-origin reporting by the exporter, Tanghenam Electric Wire & Cable (see 2509170054).
In its own brief, Encore described the errors as “glaring oversights.” It observed, as Commerce had, that Tanghenam had no way of tracking the countries of origin for specific inputs. Because of that, Commerce was also right to not let Tanghenam certify that its inputs weren’t of Chinese origin, the producer said.
It disagreed with Tanghenam’s characterization of corrections it offered during verification -- prior to Commerce discovering a number of additional errors -- as “minor.” Verification isn’t the time to offer new factual information, it said. And offering a “minor correction” at the start of verification doesn’t excuse the other mistakes, it claimed.
But regardless of the use of AFA, “ample evidence” supported Commerce’s circumvention finding in regard to Tanghenam, it said; “thus calling into question whether Tanghenam’s challenge to Commerce’s employment of AFA in the Final Determination presents a justiciable case or controversy.”
Most circumvention factors support a circumvention finding, it said.
And it said that Tanghenam was “[r]egrettably” misunderstanding the facts of the case. It agreed with the government that the exporter had conflated “the need to trace inputs for purposes of conducting valuation analyses” with the “the need to trace inputs to inquiry merchandise exported to the United States.” Commerce didn’t apply AFA for Tanghenam’s failure regarding the latter, it said.