Fifth Remand in CVD Hardwood Plywood Case Gets It Right, Parties in Case Say

The Court of International Trade should sustain the Commerce Department's fifth remand redetermination on the antidumping duty investigation on certain hardwood plywood products from China, said the government, a group of consolidated plaintiffs, and a defendant-intervenor, in a series of response briefs at the Court of International Trade (Linyi Chengen Import and Export Co., Ltd., et al. v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 18-00002).

On remand, Commerce assigned a zero percent all-others dumping margin and said that it was left with no alternative but to assign respondent Chengen’s zero percent rate to the separate rate plaintiffs as there was no alternative on the record (see 2303170047). In the December remand order, CIT Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ordered Commerce to recalculate the 57.36% separate rate, finding that Commerce could not set the all-others rate by averaging the de minimis rate and the 114.72% AFA-based rate assigned to Dongfang (see 212210078). The two companies that requested voluntary respondent status, Dehua TB and Jiangyang Wood, were excluded from the order. Other firms that submitted invalid voluntary respondent requests would not be excluded, Commerce said.

The separate rate plaintiffs support Commerce’s determination to apply the zero margin and exclude certain companies from the order, the separate rate plaintiffs said in their May 26 reply. Even though the application of the zero rate to the separate rate Plaintiffs was not fully explained by the department, the remand results and the case law leading up to the determination adequately explained the department’s position, they said.

Commerce was right to have excluded Dehua TB and Jiangyang Wood because, among all the applicants, only they provided questionnaire responses by the deadlines, another group of consolidated plaintiffs said in a separate reply.

The department correctly included the voluntary respondents within the order on remand, The Coalition for Fair Trade in Hardwood Plywood said in their own reply. Commerce has the authority to limit exclusions from an order and was not required to exclude all companies that might have been assigned a zero margin, the coalition said.

Commerce's separate rate calculation followed the remand order, DOJ said in its reply. Although Commerce felt that Chengen’s zero percent rate was not representative of the potential dumping activities of the non-examined separate rate companies, DOJ said that the court's remand left Commerce with "little choice but to use Chengen’s zero percent rate," which it did, in compliance with the order.