US Mobile Access Equipment Makers Challenge Data Selection, Surrogate Values in AD Case

The Commerce Department erred in its selection of surrogate values and data sets in an antidumping duty investigation on mobile access equipment and subassemblies from China, the Coalition of American Manufacturers of Mobile Access Equipment said in a reply brief filed April 25 at the Court of International Trade. The court should remand the final determination in the AD investigation to Commerce, the coalition argued (Coalition of American Manufacturers of Mobile Access Equipment v. U.S., CIT # 22-00152).

The coalition is challenging Commerce's reliance on shipping rate data, submitted by respondents Lingong Group Jinan Heavy Machinery and Zhejiang Dingli Machinery, and its rejection of Maersk data, submitted by the coalition, to value ocean freight. The case also challenges Commerce's selection of surrogate values for minor fabricated steel components and for drive motors, as well as Commerce's determination to accept untimely information submitted by Dingli (see 2206140053).

Commerce did not address the "significant ways" in which the Maersk data submitted by the coalition was superior to the respondents' data, the coalition said. Both data sets reflected relevant additional data that should be preferable based on Commerce's own reasoning, the coalition argued. "If data reflecting three sources was preferable because it resulted in a broader market average, why would data from four sources not be more preferable?"

In addition, Commerce's preference for publicly available data is nonsensical because the department granted business proprietary status to the respondents' shipping routes, which the Maersk data covers, the coalition said. Commerce could not show that the Maersk dataset was less reliable than that provided by the respondents, the coalition said.

If the agency continues to use only the respondents' data in its freight calculations, it must adjust those rates to include certain necessary fees, the coalition argued. Dingli omitted from its submitted Descartes freight rates items such as the bunker adjustment factor, the destination delivery charge, and local port surcharges. Commerce excluded those charges because it argued that they are included in the brokerage and handling surrogate value. The World Bank's "Doing Business in Brazil" report cited by Commerce does not reference a bunker adjustment factor rate. Commerce has previously rejected freight rates that represented only the base charge without "other associated charges related to freight costs," the coalition said.

The Harmonized Tariff Schedule codes selected by Commerce for the steel components did not reflect the "substantial further processing" that Dingli's steel components underwent and resulted in significant undervaluation of the inputs and understatement of Dingli's dumping margin, the coalition argued. The surrogate value selection of the drive motor inputs resulted in a similar undervaluation of the motor and the subsequent dumping margin.

Finally, the coalition argued, Commerce improperly accepted business proprietary rebuttal and factors of production information from Dingli "well after the deadline" for questionnaire responses and violated the requirement that rebuttal surrogate value information be publicly available. "Unlike Petitioner's bracketing of the public Maersk freight data, Dingli's rebuttal SV information implicates the exact reliability, manipulation and transparency concerns underlying the requirement that information be public," the coalition argued.