Commerce's Rejection of Questionnaire Response Was Abuse of Discretion, Importer Argues to CIT

The Commerce Department erred when it rejected extension requests and imposed adverse facts available in its 2019-2021 antidumping duty administrative review on quartz surface products from India, three affiliated Indian producers said in a Feb. 8 complaint to the Court of International Trade (Antique Marbonite v. U.S., CIT # 23-00030).

In the review, the plaintiffs were selected for individual examination by Commerce as a collective affiliated entity called Antique Group. Antique Group submitted timely responses to the first questionnaire in 2021 and again to the first supplemental questionnaire in April 2022. It filed its response to the second supplemental questionnaire that May. Commerce rejected the submission, saying that it had come after Commerce's 10 a.m. EST deadline. Antique Group asked Commerce three times in May and June for opportunities to refile, all of which were rejected.

On June 30, Commerce issued its preliminary results and assigned Antique Group a preliminary dumping margin of 323.12% based on the application of adverse facts available. Antique Group filed a substantive brief in August, arguing that Commerce should not have rejected its response to the second supplemental questionnaire and that Commerce did not need to apply AFA, as it had enough record evidence to calculate an accurate dumping margin. It also said Commerce's use of the high petition rate as total adverse facts available was "unreasonable and aberrational." Commerce issued its final results in December, continuing to find that the questionnaire rejection was legitimate and that there was no basis to reconsider.

Antique Group then filed suit at CIT, where it argued that Commerce's decision to reject the questionnaire response was arbitrary and capricious. Commerce's use of the unusual 10 a.m. deadline was "unanticipated" and an "abuse of discretion," Antique Group said. Even with the rejected questionnaire response, Commerce had enough record information to calculate an accurate dumping margin without the use of AFA, Antique Group said. The company asked the court to remand the case to Commerce for redetermination.