CBP Sticks With AD/CVD Evasion Finding Following Voluntary Remand Request to CIT

CBP continued to find that Leco Supply Co. continued to evade antidumping and countervailing duties on wire hangers from Vietnam, after voluntarily requesting a remand from the Court of International Trade to reconsider the case. Submitting its results in a Nov. 10 filing at CIT, CBP included information not previously considered in its determination and also released revised public summaries of the business confidential information (BCI), in line with a recent CIT decision (Leco Supply, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00136).

Following the Enforce and Protect Act investigation, the CBP Office of Trade's Trade Remedy Law Enforcement Directorate found that Leco was evading the AD/CVD duties by falsely claiming the country of origin as Laos, when the hangers were actually made in Vietnam. CBP recently discovered, though, that certain documents in the investigation were not transmitted from CBP's Office of Trade Regulation and Rulings (R&R) to TRLED, leading the agency to have failed to consider the entire record in the investigation. CBP then requested the chance to amend that (see 2108020034).

CBP also requested the remand to revise its public summaries of the BCI given the recent Royal Brush v. United States decision, which took the agency to task for not being as forthcoming as statutorily obliged in a separate EAPA investigation. Leco, however, opposed the remand motion, characterizing it as "too broad to be justifiable."

After returning with the voluntary remand results, CBP said that it accomplished its twin goals of not releasing BCI to parties that are not authorized to see it while ensuring that there are proper levels of transparency in the investigation. The agency required all parties, including Leco, to submit a public summary of its BCI as part of the remand. After reviewing them, CBP says they're good to go and satisfy the requirements of the law. "On remand, CBP provided revised public versions, including public summaries, for a number of documents," the agency said. "For example, analysis reports for which CBP had previously claimed were not capable of summarization now have the relevant public summary."

In comments submitted on the draft remand results, Leco objected to the evasion finding on several grounds. CBP failed to "remedy material deficiencies concerning bracketing" of BCI in accordance with the law, failed to accept Leco's written arguments and mischaracterized Leco's rebuttal information, the company said.

Disagreeing on all fronts, CBP said that its evasion finding and treatment of BCI was proper. Leco said that there wasn't a "scintilla" of evidence for evasion and that the industry in Laos had sufficient capacity to make the full quantity of Leco's hanger orders. CBP said it deemed Leco's production capacity information unreliable and full of inconsistencies. "For example, CBP concluded, after reviewing information submitted by the various importers subject to the EAPA investigation and comparing it to information submitted by [the evasion alleger M&B], specifically a commissioned report based on a site visit, the importers imported more than the foreign manufacturer could produce," the remand results said. CBP also never received evidence from the foreign manufacturer itself, the brief said.