Commerce Slashes AD Margin on Remand After Accepting Document Originally Rejected as Late

The Commerce Department slashed the dumping margin for exporter Ajmal Steel Tubes & Pipe Industries on remand in an antidumping review after accepting the respondent's answers to Section A of the AD questionnaire. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on Jan. 26, Commerce dropped the dumping margin for Ajmal to 0.57% after using the company's own data as opposed to adverse facts available to calculate the margin. The agency originally rejected the submission after it was submitted late by less than two hours due to COVID-19-related technical difficulties (Ajmal Steel Tubes & Pipes Industries v. United States, CIT # 21-00587).

The case concerns an administrative review of the AD order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from the United Arab Emirates, covering entries in 2018-2019. The review started March 10, 2020. Twenty days later, the Washington, D.C., mayor issued a stay-at-home order due to the developing coronavirus pandemic, and counsel for Ajmal -- Barnes Richardson -- transitioned to a work-from-home environment.

The review's first major deadline was April 14, 2020, when the exporter had to submit its Section A responses. Due to technical difficulties, the responses came in an hour and 50 minutes late. Ajmal also tried submitting an 11th-hour extension of time (EOT) request that was also denied due to the same technical difficulties resulting in its late submission. The respondent said its counsel did not get the filing information from Ajmal's UAE office until 9 a.m. on April 14, 2020, and that the duty was put in the hands of one paralegal and an unbarred associate. During preparation of the filing, the paralegal's laptop failed to split the filing as required, leading to the untimely filing of the extension request, given that the laptop was already overwhelmed with the first task.

Commerce refused multiple requests from Ajmal to reconsider the rejection, resulting in a 54.27% adverse facts available rate. In its motion for judgment, Ajmal argued that technical difficulties stemming from the switch to a work-from-home environment constitute an "extraordinary circumstance" that justifies the late filing (see 2204110035). Commerce disagreed and rejected this claim, with the judge taking the government's side. CIT said that these circumstances "likely should not have prevented [Ajmal] from filing a timely EOT" seeing as Barnes Richardson could have filed the extension request before it received the necessary information the day before the deadline or used a different laptop. However, the judge ultimately remanded the rejection of the submission, given Commerce's own efforts to delay all filing deadlines in the review (see 2210280033).