Steel Exporter Admonishes Commerce for Rejecting Late-Filed Questionnaire Responses in AD/CVD Cases

Turkish steel exporter Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi accused the Commerce Department of a "severe abuse of discretion" by rejecting entire questionnaire responses because certain parts were filed 21 minutes and 87 minutes late in an antidumping and a countervailing duty investigation, respectively. Celik Halat says Commerce should not have applied adverse facts available to its exports of prestressed concrete steel wire strand from Turkey due to the late filings in two May 28 motions for judgment. (Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi A.S. v. United States, CIT #21-00045, #21-00050).

Commerce's imposition of a "bright-line rule" rejecting Celik Halat's entire sections B and C questionnaire responses in the antidumping case and the exporter's entire Section III questionnaire responses in the countervailing duty investigation for lateness was a failure of the agency to consider its statutory obligations, the exporter argued. Commerce had assigned an AFA rate of 53.65% in the antidumping case and 158.44% in the countervailing duty case, but Celik Halat argued that the acceptance of the rejected forms would have resulted in an accurate AD/CVD margin for the exporter.

The lateness of Celik Halat's filings came down to a matter of minutes. In the countervailing duty case, counsel for Celik Halat underwent "unexpected emergency surgery" less than two weeks before the deadline, resulting in "heroic efforts" to get the documents in on time. "Despite the minimal delay and counsel’s medical emergency, Commerce unreasonably rejected Celik Halat’s entire questionnaire response, including all narratives, exhibits, and public and both the one-day lag and final BPI versions," the motion said.

The exporter said that Commerce's decision to reject all of its filings cuts against court precedent and that acceptance of the untimely-filed responses would have imposed no burden on the investigation and resulted in accurate AD/CVD margins for Celik Halat. In both cases, the exporter's late filings were submitted over a month before the preliminary determinations were published, putting no burden on the investigation, Celik Halat said. If the submissions had been accepted, the exporter's AD rate "would have been less than 2 percent," and the CVD rate would have been zero or de minimis, it said.