Indian Exporter Challenges Commerce's Failure to Fix Programming Error in AD Margin Calculation

The Commerce Department's move to not fix a programming error in its antidumping margin calculation, which resulted in "irrelevant third country costs" getting assigned to sold but not produced products, was "unreasonable" and illegal, exporter Navneet Education Ltd. said in a May 23 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The result of such an error was "an overinflated and inaccurate dumping margin that did not reflect the reality of Navneet's de minimis margin that it should have received," the complaint said (Navneet Education Ltd. v. United States, CIT #22-00132).

The case contests Commerce's final results in the administrative review of the antidumping duty order on lined paper products from India in which Navneet served as a respondent. The exporter received a de minimis rate in nine of the last 12 reviews it participated in, but that changed when the agency ran into a programming error. In the review, Navneet said that it did not report product characteristics, and that when they are not reported Commerce randomly adds, or doesn't add, product characteristics to the margin calculation methodology. This then changes whether third country costs are included.

"There is no rhyme or reason for Commerce’s decision whether to include the product characteristics, and no way for respondents to predict what Commerce will do," the brief said. "Commerce’s unpredictable and inconsistent choice is the sole difference between a zero or de minimis rate and the rate Commerce calculated for Navneet in this review." Commerce's programming language set to "YES" in the home market settings that product characteristics were included in the cost database, "when Navneet had not reported product characteristics as separate fields." This allegedly resulted in another error in that Navneet's third country costs were included in the duty program. The result was a 20.22% dumping margin for the exporter.

"Commerce’s decision to not correct a technical flaw in its SAS programming language, which resulted in the assignment of irrelevant third country costs to sold but not produced products during the [period of review (POR)] was unreasonable, unsupported by substantial evidence and not in accordance with law," the brief said.