Wood Flooring Exporter Challenges Commerce's Denial of Its Scope Ruling Request

The Commerce Department violated the law when it decided not to undertake a scope inquiry upon the request of Zhejiang Yuhua Timber Co., A-Timber Flooring Company Limited and Mullican Flooring Co., the three companies said in a Sept. 17 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Zhejiang Yuhua Timber Co. Ltd., et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00502).

Yuhua is an exporter of multilayered wood flooring from China that ships its goods through A-Timber Flooring Company and sells to Mullican. In 2011, after conducting an antidumping duty investigation on multilayered wood flooring from China, Commerce found no dumping margin for Yuhua's sales. So, Yuhua enjoyed no AD duties until March 2021 when CBP began demanding cash deposits for the exporter's entries, finding that the entries were subject to antidumping duties.

The three plaintiffs then filed a scope ruling request with Commerce, seeking clarification from Commerce as to whether their merchandise was the "same sales channel examined by Commerce in the original investigation which resulted in a zero margin and subsequent exclusion of Plaintiff Yuhua from the antidumping duty order, and thus such merchandise was outside the scope of the antidumping order in this case."

Commerce rejected this request, indicating that the scope inquiry did not seek a ruling on whether an individual product is included within the scope. "Commerce did so without any explanation of why it thought that this scope request failed to be a valid scope request," the complaint said. The plaintiffs are now challenging this denial as unsupported by substantial evidence and contrary to law.