Commerce Erred in Using Past AD Margin for All-Others Rate, US Quartz Maker Tells CIT

The Commerce Department erred in calculating the non-selected rate in a quartz surface products antidumping duty review, AD petitioner Cambria Co. argued in a Feb. 10 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Cambria seeks to have Commerce return to a simple average rate calculated based on zero and adverse facts available rates in the preliminary results of the review, instead of the 3.19% mark from the final results that was taken from the all-others rate in the original AD investigation (Cambria Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00007).

The case concerns the 2019-2021 administrative review of quartz surface products from India in which Pokarna Engineered Stone and Antique Marbonite Private were tapped as the two mandatory respondents. In the review's preliminary results, Commerce assigned a zero percent margin for Pokarna, a 323.12% adverse facts available rate for Marbonite, and a 161.56% margin for the non-invdividually reviewed respondents. The agency said it reached this rate by using its "expected method" when the mandatory respondents' rates are all either a zero, de minimis or AFA rate.

For the review's final results, though, Commerce changed the rate to 3.19%, using the all-others rate from the original investigation. Cambria contested this position administratively and now at the trade court, urging the agency to continue using its expected method. The petitioner pointed to past CIT cases which said that the use of the expected method "creates an assumption that the resulting dumping rate reasonably reflects the dumping rates of the non-selected respondents."

The plaintiff said that it would be "improper" to use the rate from the original investigation since the prior rate "did not reasonably reflect the dumping behavior of the Indian producers and exporters during the [period] of the review." In its complaint, Cambria accused the respondents of carrying out "an unprecedented public relations and lobbying campaign to pressure Commerce to change course," which included a Wall Street Journal op-ed likening Commerce officials and analysts to college students on spring break.

"The record evidence showed that the non-selected rate from application of the expected method did reasonably reflect the non-selected respondents’ rates," the brief said. "For example, a comparison of the average selling prices for Pokarna, Antique Group, and the 51 other companies supported the reasonableness of the non-selected rate that was calculated using the expected method. Commerce completely failed to address this evidence in the Final Results."