Commerce Properly Found Door Thresholds Qualify for Finished Merchandise AD/CVD Exclusion, DOJ Says

The Commerce Department complied with the Court of International Trade's remand instructions when it found that certain door thresholds qualify for the "finished merchandise" exclusion from the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, the Justice Department said in a pair of Feb. 14 reply briefs. Filing its responses in two separate cases, one brought by Columbia Aluminum Products and the other by Worldwide Door Components, Commerce said that it relied on CIT's rulings to find that the plaintiffs' door thresholds qualified for the finished merchandise exclusion while ignoring prior authorities that established that a subassembly could not qualify for the exclusion (Worldwide Door Components v. United States, CIT #19-00012) (Columbia Aluminum Products v. United States, CIT # 19-00013).

The remand is the second, following an initial remand that continued to find, as Commerce had in the original scope ruling, that the thresholds were covered by the AD/CVD orders. Commerce had cited scope language that explicitly includes door thresholds, but Judge Timothy Stanceu said the mentions only refer to whole aluminum extrusions used as thresholds, and not assemblies containing extruded aluminum (see 2008270039). In the cases' second opinion, CIT said that Commerce must reconsider, due to examples of finished merchandise that seem to apply to goods similar to the thresholds (see 2109150046). Under protest, Commerce flipped its scope decision and excluded the thresholds (see 2112140039).

In the second remand instructions, the trade court said that precedents, from both CIT and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, either do not apply to the cases at issue or do not support Commerce's position that Columbia's and Worldwide's thresholds are subassemblies and do not qualify for the finished merchandise exclusion. As such, Commerce flipped its scope position since it could not rely on these authorities. The defendant-intervenors, the Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee and Endura Products, argued that Commerce reasonably found that since the examples listed in the finished merchandise exclusion are laid out as finished merchandise "in and of themselves," they didn't need any further analysis as to whether they are included in a downstream product.

"This Court held that Commerce had not sufficiently considered why 'doors with glass or vinyl' -- which, like door thresholds, were not part of a larger downstream product -- could satisfy the finished merchandise exclusion, but Columbia’s door thresholds could not," DOJ said. "This Court also held that Commerce improperly interpreted the exemplars as an exclusive list, rather than examples of finished merchandise." As such, Commerce was right to then exclude the thresholds from the AD/CVD orders, the agency said.