The Commerce Department properly decided not to reopen the record to inflate Mexican surrogate wage data and ultimately choose Brazilian wage data in the antidumping duty investigation on beer kegs from China, the Court of International Trade said. Sustaining Commerce's third remand results in the case, Judge M. Miller Baker said the agency reasonably said it was "unnecessary to reopen the record to inflate the Mexican wage figures" when the Brazilian data "suited the agency's purposes."
After the Commerce Department made no changes to the results of a 2019-20 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on Chinese solar cells (see 2408300020) after a remand order (see 2405090045), importers and exporters said that the department had failed to follow the trade court’s instructions -- continuing to justify use of a second surrogate to value an input with the argument that it needed that input reported in something other than kilograms even though it itself ordered respondents to report that way (Jinko Solar Import and Export Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00219).
The Commerce Department reasonably placed greater emphasis on research and development investment when it found that solar cells from Cambodia were circumventing the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on solar cells from China, the U.S. said. Filing a reply brief to the Court of International Trade on Oct. 29, the government argued that the agency "set forth uncontroverted record evidence to explain that R&D is particularly important to solar producers" and that these investments are key to "technological breakthroughs in the solar industry" (BYD (H.K.) Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00221).
The Commerce Department announced that it increased the antidumping margin for a mandatory respondent and nonselected respondents in remand results of a review on mobile access equipment from China after recalculating costs for accuracy. The mandatory respondent’s rate rose from 31.7% to 37.2%, while the nonselected respondents’ rose from 51.83% to 56.5% (Coalition of American Manufacturers of Mobile Access Equipment v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 22-00152).
The Commerce Department unlawfully declined to assign exporter Yantai Zhongzhen Trading Co. a separate antidumping rate in the AD investigation on pea protein from China, the company argued in a complaint at the Court of International Trade on Oct. 25. Zhongzhen targeted Commerce's decision to root its finding in the fact that one if its corporate officials is a member of a local People's Congress and another is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference of Zhaoyuan City (CPPCC) (Yantai Oriental Protein Tech Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00181).
The U.S. on Sept. 20 defended the Commerce Department’s continued decision on a second remand to use Brazil as the primary surrogate country and Malaysia for the surrogate values of a particular input in a 2019-2020 review of the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00190).
The Commerce Department made no changes to its final results of the 2019-20 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on solar cells from China, which was on remand at the Court of International Trade after the court sent back three elements of the review (see 2405090045). The court sent back Commerce's valuation of solar glass using Romanian import prices, valuation of air freight using Freightos data and use of partial adverse facts available against exporter Risen Energy Co. (Jinko Solar Import and Export Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00219).
Exporter Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co. asked the Court of International Trade to compel the Commerce Department not to make adjustments to the plywood surrogate value in the 2019-20 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China. The exporter said in an Aug. 20 brief that, after two remands, the court "has been patient with Commerce," but the agency "has now demonstrated that it has no reasonable explanation for its methodology yet sticks to its unsupported position" (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 22-00190).
Antidumping duty petitioner Catfish Farmers of America on Aug. 15 opposed the Commerce Department's remand results in a suit on the 2017-18 administrative review of the AD order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam. In comments submitted to the Court of International Trade, the petitioner contested Commerce's conclusion that India offered better quality surrogate value data than Indonesia for generally valuing the fish fillets' factors of production (Catfish Farmers of America v. U.S., CIT # 20-00105).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Aug. 12 ordered exporter Risen Energy Co. to appear at oral argument in an antidumping duty case after the company waived its right to appear (see 2408020019). Risen originally brought suit to contest the 2017-18 AD review on solar cells from China, arguing that the Commerce Department failed to use the best information when setting surrogate values for the company's backsheet and ethyl vinyl acetate inputs (see 2305170049). The per curiam order from the court told Risen to appear at oral argument after the U.S. said it would appear (see 2408070003) (Risen Energy Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1550).