Commerce Violated Remand Order to Reconsider AFA, AD Respondent Argues in CIT Comments

The Commerce Department ignored a Court of International Trade remand order to reconsider the use of adverse facts against antidumping duty respondent Meihua and restated arguments on remand that the CIT had already rejected (see 2306280043), Meihua said in its Aug. 11 remand comments at CIT. Consolidated plaintiffs Deosen Biochemical and Jianlong Biotechnology raised separate issues with the remand in their own comments (Meihua Group International (Hong Kong) v. U.S., CIT # 22-00069).

The remand order said that the record did not support imposing AFA on Meihua in an administrative review on xanthan gum from China, and therefore the court "specifically held that Commerce is not authorized under the facts of this review to impose AFA," argued Meihua. On remand, Commerce can't be allowed to reach the same decision with the same facts while claiming to comply with the remand order, said Meihua. The CIT should "reiterate its conclusion" that the use of AFA in calculating Meihua's was unsupported by the record and remand the review back to Commerce with instructions to recalculate Meihua’s margin using record information, Meihua said.

Deosun also focused on "Commerce’s failure to conduct a collapsing analysis for the two Deosen entities," saying that the CIT was correct in calling it an abuse of discretion. Deosen said that its rate is "not reasonably reflective of [its] potential dumping margin," and the Court should order Commerce to recalculate a separate rate for the company.

Jianlong's comments focused on Commerce's decision not to recalculate its separate rate. Although the court "did not reach the issue of Commerce’s calculation of the separate rate” in its remand order, it required Commerce to further consider or explain rates for the separate rate respondents based on any changes that Commerce may make to Meihua’s rate. "Commerce’s decision not to change Meihua’s rate did not relieve Commerce from the obligation of reconsidering the calculation of Jianlong’s separate rate," Jianlong said.

In its June 27 remand results, Commerce stuck by its decision to apply adverse facts available to antidumping duty respondent Meihua along with its decisions not to rescind its review of Deosen Biochemical and not to recalculate a separate rate in spite of a court order to reconsider all three.