Domestic Rebar Association Defends Use of AFA by Commerce in AD Review

The Court of International Trade should affirm Commerce Department margin calculations for Mexican exporters Simec, Acerero and Sidertul in the 2019-20 antidumping duty administrative review on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Mexico, the Rebar Trade Action Coalition (RTAC) said in its July 10 motion at the Court of International Trade (Grupo Simec v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 22-00202).

RTAC asked the court to uphold Commerce's use of adverse facts in calculating Simec's AD rate of 66.7% and its use of that rate to create the 33.35% all-others rate assigned to Sidertul and Acerero.

Commerce granted multiple extensions for Simec's responses, but the company failed to correct many of the deficiencies and failed to timely file responses despite being an "experienced respondent," RTAC said. Commerce even notified Simec that the agency would be unlikely to grant more leeway long before applying AFA, RTAC said.

While Commerce gave Simec the opportunity to correct and supplement its initial questionnaire responses, the response data was unsatisfactory because Simec failed to meaningfully address many of the questions and even introduced new discrepancies, RTAC said.

Simec has argued that Commerce's denial of a deadline extension was unreasonable, despite several prior granted extensions, because the company had lost three accountants on its antidumping duty response team due to COVID-19 (see 2304280040).