Commerce Drops Entire 154% AFA Rate for Omani Steel Nails on Remand

The Commerce Department reversed its imposition of total adverse facts available on antidumping duty respondent Oman Fasteners in its July 17 remand results, resulting in a complete removal of a 154.33% AD rate for the company, Oman Fasteners, Commerce had ruled had failed to cooperate to the best of its ability because it did not submit all of its responses to a supplemental questionnaire by the deadline. The single late submission missed Commerce's cut-off time by 16 minutes and Court of International Trade Judge M. Miller Baker said that the ensuing suit was "not a close case" when he remanded the results in a February opinion (see 2302280040) (Oman Fasteners v. U.S., CIT # 22-00348)..

On remand, Commerce reopened the administrative record and allowed Oman Fasteners to refile its response to the questionnaire. The petitioners argued that Commerce had correctly applied AFA because Oman Fasteners failed to show any extraordinary circumstances that prevented a timely submission and accused Commerce of misconstruing the remand order. AFA was still warranted because the record continued to contain serious deficiencies, the petitioners said in their remand comments.

Commerce disagreed, saying that the court "clearly found Commerce’s denial of a retroactive extension for Oman Fasteners to be an abuse of discretion, as well as the subsequent determinations made in the Final Results that led to the application of total AFA." After allowing Oman Fasteners to resubmit its questionairre responses, Commerce said that it was "inappropriate to rely on facts available or apply an adverse inference for any reason."

The department went on to revisit its date of sale, less than fair value determination, export price, and normal value analysis and ultimately arrived at a 0% dumping margin for Oman Fasteners.