US Granular PTFE Resin Producer Wants Selling Expenses Reported on Transaction Basis in CIT Case

The Commerce Department's decision to accept mandatory antidumping duty respondent Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited's method for reporting its U.S. movement expenses was illegal, U.S. manufacturer Daikin America argued in a May 12 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Gujarat Fluorochemicals' ignored Commerce's instructions to report its sales expenses on a transaction-specific basis, which should have prompted the use of adverse facts available, the complaint said (Daikin America v. United States, CIT #22-00122).

The case concerns the AD investigation on granular polytetrafluoroethylene resin from India in which Gujarat Fluorochemicals served as the sole mandatory respondent. During the investigation, the respondent reported its movement expenses, including domestic inland freight, international freight and domestic inland insurance by aggregating its expenses by grade of product, calculating an average movement expense for each grade. In the face of another request from Commerce to report these expenses on a transaction-specific basis, Gujarat Fluorochemicals said it could not do so, though it "remained silent as to why allocating movement expenses by product type was appropriate," Daikin said.

Daikin pushed for partial AFA in the investigation over the reporting of per-unit movement expenses, arguing that they were "distortive and inaccurate." The producer now pushes for this outcome at CIT, pushing in the alternative for Commerce to "recalculate the movement expenses in a manner that removes the distortions from GFCL’s allocation methodology by using the period-wide weighted-average movement expenses for all product type."

In the complaint's second count, Daikin argues against Commerce's decision to grant a constructed export price offset for the respondent. Commerce's practice is to grant CEP offsets after a respondent shows that different levels of trade exist between the home and U.S. markets. Daikin said that Gujarat failed to do this twice, yet Commerce continued to grant the offset. "Commerce’s decision to grant GFCL a CEP offset in the final determination is unsupported by substantial evidence and otherwise not in accordance with law," the complaint said.