Commerce 'Froze Out' AD Respondent From Admin Review, Exporters Argue at CIT

The Commerce Department abused its discretion when it rejected Mexican exporter Simec's extension request and refused to accept a late submission during the 2019-20 antidumping duty administrative review on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Mexico, exporter Acerero said in its Aug. 9 reply motion at the Court of International Trade. The motion came in response to a filing from the Rebar Trade Action Coalition (RTAC), which asked the court to uphold Commerce's use of adverse facts available in calculating Simec's AD rate of 66.7% and the all-others rate assigned to exporter Sidertul and Acerero at 33.35% (see 2307110019) (Grupo Acerero v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 22-00202).

Commerce’s application of AFA to Simec was unsupported by substantial evidence, Acerero said. The agency abused its discretion by denying Simec’s extension requests to submit its questionnaire responses while it granted "multiple extensions" to the other mandatory respondent, Deacero, the exporter said.

Simec requested an extension because COVID-19 prevented access to information and people, barred outside consultants from reaching Simec offices to provide "efficient assistance" and took the lives of three Simec accountants who were "key to preparing the response," Acerero said. The company noted that Simec had to replace its experienced personnel with "neophytes to U.S. antidumping law" while the respondent's attempts to bring in experienced consultants were complicated by Mexico’s COVID-19 travel policies.

Commerce also erred by applying the average of Simec’s AFA rate and the zero rate calculated for Deacero to Grupo Acerero and Gerdau Corsa as respondents not individually investigated. Both Acerero and Gerdau Corsa were cooperative respondents, Aceroro noted, claiming that the 33.35% rate is more than six times higher than the highest calculated rate for a respondent in an administrative review. The claim echoed Simec's own argument in its motion for judgment (see 2304280040).

In its own response, Simec said it was "frozen out" of the administrative review process and did not lag behind Deacero in the questionnaire process, as claimed by Commerce. The agency incorrectly rejected Simec's "corrective" as containing "new information." Simec argued that "long-standing precedent" allows corrective submissions to include remedies for omissions. Here, Simec said that its filing contained additional information regarding questionnaire requests and Commerce had no reason to reject it.