Commerce's Ability to Define 'Producers' Irrelevant to Antidumping Investigation, AD Petitioner Says

Even if the Commerce Department did not act within its authority when deciding not to include the views of countertop fabricators in its industry support determination before beginning an antidumping and countervailing duty investigation on quartz surface products from India, the agency still had the requisite level of industry support and the authority to start the investigation anyway, petitioner Cambria Company said in a June 9 brief backing the Department of Justice's defense in a case at the Court of International Trade (Pokarna Engineered Stone Limited v. United States, CIT #20-00127).

Two such countertop fabricators, Pokarna Engineered Stone and M S International, filed the lawsuit, claiming that Commerce went beyond its authority when it excluded their views from the industry support determination. DOJ argues that the fact that the term "producer" is never defined in the statute, which gives Commerce the cover to define the term (see 2105270065). Cambria agreed, supporting Commerce's contention that a producer is "an entity that performs sufficient production-related activities to be considered a producer for the purpose of being a member of the domestic industry when calculating industry support."

Cambria also argued that even if the countertop fabricators were to be included in the industry support determination, Commerce had enough industry support from other sources to plow ahead with the antidumping investigation. "In its initiation notice, Commerce stated that even were it to include the fabricators’ opposition in its calculation of industry support, Cambria still had the requisite level of industry support to initiate the investigations," Cambria said.

Cambria said that, in any case, industry support was not required to begin an antidumping investigation. "Even if the Court were to find that there was insufficient industry support at the time of the filing of the petitions, there would still be no need to nullify the investigations, because Commerce has the authority to initiate an antidumping investigation sua sponte whenever it has reason to believe that unfairly traded imports are causing material injury to a domestic industry," the brief said.