Roller Bearings Manufacturer Challenges AFA Use for Uncooperative Suppliers

The Commerce Department shouldn't have relied on adverse facts available in an antidumping duty review on tapered roller bearings from China when the respondent was fully cooperative, Chinese roller bearing exporter Shanghai Tainai Bearing said in an Oct. 19 reply at Court of International Trade. Tainai didn't dispute a gap in the record due to incomplete or nonexistent responses from its suppliers. However, the company objected to the use of adverse inferences because it says it complied to the best of its ability (Shanghai Tainai Bearing v. U.S., CIT # 23-00020).

The failure was not of information within Tainai's control, which Tainai said Commerce had admitted earlier in the proceeding. The exporter pointed to "clear and uncontroverted evidence" on the record that it had fully cooperated to the extent possible and had provided all of the information in the company's possession when requested by Commerce.

There is also no evidence that Tainai could have forced cooperation from its unaffiliated suppliers to provide answers to Commerce, Tainai said. The company also challenged Commerce's assertion that it is a "large" company able to pressure its unaffiliated suppliers to provide information to Commerce. Tainai compared its revenue to Timken Romania, which Commerce used in its surrogate value calculation as evidence that it is a relatively small producer of bearings.

The government had argued that the uncooperative determination was made on the basis that Tainai knew it would have to provide information from possibly uncooperative sources as early as January 2022, when Commerce "warned" it of the requirement. Tainai argued that the date was nearly a year after the end of the period of review and any "warning" from Commerce was made long after a point at which Tainai could have done anything.

The government also alleged that Tainai "obfuscated" the identities of its suppliers. Tainai denied that claim, saying that "from the very first responses," it identified its suppliers and "clearly stated" its methodology for calculating factors of production for those suppliers.

The motion came in support of a July motion for judgment, in which Tainai asked the court to remand the case to Commerce to reconsider its selected factors of production, its deduction of Section 301 duties from the U.S. price, its decision to cap the amount of revenue received as additional payment, and its failure to grant a byproduct offset, points that it noted again briefly in its most recent reply (see 2307140003). Tainai began its challenge to contest the final 36.03% antidumping duty in a February complaint (see 2302220039).