Glycine Exporter Blasts Commerce's Finding of Affiliation in AD Review

The Commerce Department incorrectly found Kumar Industries was affiliated with one of its home market buyers and one of its input suppliers in an antidumping duty review, and shouldn't have applied adverse facts available based on the lack of information provided by Kumar because the information wasn't requested, Kumar told the Court of International Trade in a Jan. 10 complaint (Kumar Industries v. U.S., CIT #21-00622).

Commerce had saddled Kumar with AFA in the 2018-20 review on glycine from India for its alleged withholding of information over potential affiliation between it and the two companies. The home market buyer accounted for a "substantial portion" of Kumar's home market sales while the supplier was a large chunk of Kumar's purchases of inputs needed to make glycine.

Commerce believed that there was affiliation between Kumar and the two companies since both were owned by former Kumar partners. Kumar said that the partners have since sold their interests in the companies and no longer exert any control over their business operations.

Kumar argues that at no point did Commerce ask that Kumar report the home market buyer's resales of its purchases from Kumar as home market sales or report the input supplier's own input purchases of its sales to Kumar in the AD review responses. Kumar said that it gave evidence to back its claim that it wasn't affiliated with either entity and that Commerce illegally ignored such evidence.

"Commerce’s failure to articulate a reason that Kumar did not act to the best of its ability, apart from its withholding of information that justified the application of facts available, was unsupported by substantial evidence and was otherwise contrary to law," the complaint said. Commerce could have conducted its "arms' length test" to find whether the sales to the home market buyer could have been ignored and replaced the cost of purchases from the input supplier based on the market price of the relevant inputs from Kumar's other suppliers to get around any potential affiliation, Kumar said.

Kumar also argued that Commerce failed to allow it to fix any deficiencies in its responses over the question of affiliation. "At no point in the review did Commerce specifically request that Kumar report [the home market buyer's] resales of its purchases from Kumar as home market sales in the Section B Response," the complaint said. "At no point in the review did Commerce specifically request Kumar to report [the input supplier's] input purchases of its sales to Kumar in Kumar’s Section D response."