ITC Correctly Determined Injury in Methionine Import Case, Government Says

The International Trade Commission’s finding that imports of methionine from Spain and Japan had a significant impact on the domestic industry and contributed to its declining performance was reasonable and correct, the government said in an Aug. 29 motion at the Court of International Trade (Adisseo Espana v. U.S., CIT #21-00562). The motion came in response to an Aug. 12 motion by Spanish exporter Adisseo, which argued that the commission overvalued the importance of price in its determination of injury in the antidumping duty investigation (see 2208150017).

Adisseo argued that the ITC failed to deal with record evidence and to adequately explain its choices even though it has broad discretion in determining pricing methodology. The Commission’s price effects analysis "significantly understated" the importance of non-price factors in methionine purchasers’ decision making and discussion of non-price factors was "almost non-existent," Adisseo said.

The government argues that the ITC reasonably found that both the volume of imports, and the increase in that volume, was significant in absolute terms and relative to consumption in the U.S. Contrary to Adisseo's assertion, the "Commission did not find that 'purchasers will always buy the lowest price product'," the government said, only that “price is an important factor in purchasing decisions" as required by the statute. The government also said that the statute requires no "volume effect analysis" in determining whether import amounts are significant.

The Commission first considered whether there had been significant price underselling by subject imports using the quarterly price comparison data and found that responding purchasers reported shifting substantial volumes of sales from domestic producers to subject imports due to price. In light of the amount of price renegotiation of annual or long-term contracts, "low-priced offers for subject imports exerted downward pressure on prices for the domestic like product as the domestic industry reduced prices to maintain sales volume," the government argued. "[On-price] factors could not explain the magnitude of domestic price declines." Therefore, the Commission reasonably found that imports depressed prices "to a significant degree," the government concluded.