Commerce 'Fraud' Set New AD Duties on Chinese Shrimp Exporter Revoked Years Earlier, Lawsuit Says

The Commerce Department essentially “committed fraud” against a Chinese shrimp exporter that had been revoked from an antidumping duty order but, because of Commerce’s own misspelling that the agency refuses to correct, found itself years later participating in an administrative review and being assigned an AD duty cash deposit rate, the exporter said in a brief filed April 26 at the Court of International Trade (Shantou Red Garden Food Processing Co., Ltd. et al v. U.S., CIT # 20-03947).

Shantou Red Garden Food Processing (Shantou RGFP) says Commerce in a 2013 Section 129 determination partially revoked its AD duty order on frozen warmwater shrimp from China for Shantou RGFP and its affiliate, Shantou Red Garden Foodstuff. But in 2019, when Shantou RGFP received Commerce’s request for information related to an administrative review, it discovered that the Section 129 determination revoked the order for “RGFP” rather than “Shantou RGFP,” though it did correctly list Shantou Red Garden Foodstuff, which Commerce had been treating as the same entity as Shantou RGFP for AD duty purposes, the brief said.

That’s despite no evidence any entity named “RGFP” ever existed, said Shantou RGFP. And even if Commerce were not referring to Shantou RGPF in 2013, treating them as a single entity means Shantou Red was revoked anyway, despite not being named in the notice. Commerce would go on to set a 58.96% AD rate for Shantou RGFP in the review anyway. Making matters worse, Commerce also in the review found Shantou Red Garden Foodstuff affiliated with Shantou RGFP, and also subjected it to the 58.96% rate, the complaint said.

Shantou RGFP asked Commerce to correct its 2013 revocation notice in 2020 after discovering the error, but Commerce refused. Now the court should direct it to do so, and rescind the administrative review that improperly ensnared Shantou RGFP and its affiliate, Shantou RGFP said. “It is arbitrary and capricious as well as an abuse of discretion for Commerce to refuse to admit to a typographical error by not inserting “Shantou” prior to RGFP’s name in the revocation order in 2013. Moreover, there is no statutory deadline to correct a typographical error,” it said.