Turkish Aluminum Foil Exporter Makes Case Against Commerce's Antidumping Results at CIT

The Commerce Department erred when it weight-averaged reported raw material premium costs (DIRMATMP) for all control numbers (CONNUMs) because that distorts their costs, antidumping duty respondent Assan Aluminyum Sanayi said in a Jan. 4 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The respondent further argued against Commerce's decisions to deduct the amount of Section 232 duties paid from its U.S. price, limit Assan's full duty drawback adjustment and treat certain management fees as indirect selling expenses (Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT #21-00616).

Assan is challenging Commerce's final results in its antidumping duty review of aluminum foil from Turkey. Preliminarily, Commerce assigned a zero percent dumping rate to Assan. The agency then reviewed the record and ended up with a final 2.28% dumping margin for the Turkish exporter.

Commerce's use of weight-averaged cost for both the London Metal Exchange and metal premium portions of metal costs "introduces distortions in the cost calculations because it ignores fundamental cost differences related to yield loss," Assan said. Instead, Commerce should have used the metal premium element in DIRMATMP provided by Assan since it's the method the respondent uses and is a more accurate calculation of relative costs, the complaint said. Commerce's failure to do so results in all subject merchandise having the same unit metal cost, which is contrary to law, the brief said.

Assan also urged CIT to find illegal Commerce's deduction of the company's Section 232 duties paid from its U.S. price, despite recent CIT decisions to the contrary. On the duty drawback adjustment, Assan argued that "Commerce's decision to limit the full duty drawback adjustment to which Assan was entitled by dividing the amount of import duties rebated or not collected by reason of exportation by total exports to the United States and applying that per unit adjustment to all of Assan's U.S. sales is, contrary to law and unsupported by substantial evidence."

Instead, the law requires that U.S. price be increased by the amount of any import duties imposed by the exporting country that have been rebated or not collected. Due to this, Assan was entitled to a full adjustment, it said. "The allocation of Assan's exempted import duties over all U.S. exports resulted in an inconsistent numerator and denominator in Commerce's calculation, which significantly limited the amount of per-unit duty drawback being added to U.S. price," the complaint said.