Wheel Importer Goes After Commerce's All-Others Rate in CVD Review at CIT

The Commerce Department's refusal to calculate a non-adverse facts available rate for all other respondents in a countervailing duty review is not in accordance with the law, steel wheel importer Rimco said in its Nov. 30 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The agency's move of averaging the AFA rates to come up with a 388.1% all-others rate in the review is not backed by substantial evidence and cuts against a past CIT ruling, Rimco said (Rimco, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00588).

Rimco is contesting the final results in the 2019 review of the countervailing duty order on certain steel wheels 12 to 16.5 inches in diameter from China. During the review, Rimco asked Commerce to calculate the all-others rate without the AFA inferences used against the mandatory respondents, suggesting instead that the agency should use the 58.30% non-AFA CVD rate established during the preliminary results.

In a CVD review, when the mandatory respondents' rates are de minimis or based on AFA, the "expected method" that Commerce must follow involves weight averaging these numbers. Last year in Bosun Tools Co., Ltd., et al. v. United States, CIT remanded Commerce's use of the expected method for determining the all-others rate because it was based on the AFA rates and did not reasonably reflect the other respondents' dumping margins. Rimco cites this decision as evidence that the court has previously ruled against Commerce's use of AFA rates when calculating the all-others rate.

However, the trade court ultimately upheld Commerce's use of the expected method after it gave a further explanation. The agency said the rate was close to the all-others rate in past reviews and reflected general export prices, which were trending upward.