CIT OKs no Review of Zeroing in China Sawblades AD Investigation

A Chinese manufacturer/exporter challenged the International Trade Administration’s denial of a request for a changed circumstance review to reconsider the use of zeroing in the investigation which led to the AD duty order for diamond sawblades from China. The reason for the request was that after ITA made its final AD determination (but before it issued the AD order), it announced¹ that it would no longer use zeroing in investigations. Nevertheless, the ITA argued that it did not need to reconsider its use of zeroing in the sawblades investigation, because its final AD duty rate determination pre-dated the policy change. The Court of International Trade agreed with the ITA, finding the agency’s denial of a changed circumstance review was “not unreasonable.”

¹Zeroing refers to the practice of counting only sales at less than fair value to calculate the weighted-average dumping margin, excluding all non-dumped sales transactions from the margin: effective February 22, 2007 (though initially announced for January 16, 2007), the agency changed its policy and abandoned zeroing in all less-than-fair value investigations, while keeping the practice in place for administrative reviews.