Commerce's Denial of Third Country Sales in AD Case for Duty Evasion Lacks Evidence, Brief Says

The Commerce Department's denial of third country sales data for evasion of antidumping duties in establishing normal value in an antidumping duty case lacks proper evidence, shrimp exporter Z.A. Sea Foods Private Limited said in a brief filed June 18 with the Court of International Trade. ZASF said that there was no evidence in the record to back Commerce's reliance on CBP's determination in an Enforce and Protect Act investigation that ZASF's shrimp imports from Vietnam evaded antidumping duties from India (Z.A. Sea Foods Private Limited et al v. United States, CIT #21-00031).

ZASF challenges the final results of the antidumping administrative review on certain frozen warm water shrimp from India. In the review, Commerce selected ZASF as the sole mandatory respondent. When attempting to establish the company's normal value of its shrimp, Commerce determined that there were insufficient sales in the U.S. to use its American sales data. Typically, this would mean relying on ZASF's sales in a third country, with preference given to the largest third country market. In ZASF's case, this meant Vietnam.

However, Commerce refused to use ZASF's Vietnamese data and relied on constructed value instead. The agency said that there was substantial evidence to find that ZASF evaded Indian antidumping duty orders through its Vietnamese sales by commingling Indian and Vietnamese shrimp, then shipping these shrimp to the U.S. labeled as being of Vietnamese origin. This transshipping occurred at the hands of one of ZASF's customers, the Minh Phu Group, Commerce said.

"There is no evidence on the record that ZASF made sales to Vietnam with knowledge that a customer might engage in a duty evasion scheme, or that ZASF sold shrimp products to Vietnam at particular prices that facilitated or were in any way influenced by a U.S. duty evasion scheme, or that any of the shrimp that the Minh Phu Group sold to the United States was purchased from ZASF," the brief said.