Commerce Yet to Explain Its Surrogate Country Analysis, Fish Filet Importer Says

Commerce has still not properly explained why India is a better surrogate country for Vietnam than Indonesia for an antidumping duty review’s analysis of fish filet exports, an importer said in remand comments Dec. 22 (Catfish Farmers of America v. U.S., CIT # 21-00380).

Catfish Farmers of America brought its suit to the Court of International Trade in August 2021 challenging the final results of a 2018-2019 AD administrative review on its products (see 2108300051). CIT remanded the case in July, saying Commerce “misapplied the statutory standard” for picking surrogate countries by looking only to countries with the “same” level of economic development as Vietnam, rather than broadening its search to also include countries with “comparable” levels (see 2307170051).

Catfish Farmers said Commerce still didn't adequately “explain or support” its use of India as Vietnam’s surrogate in the agency's November decision to sustain (see 2311070027). It didn't support its conclusion that Indonesia wasn't economically comparable with Vietnam, the brief said, nor that India provided superior data for comparison.

Commerce explained in its remand results that it employs a “sequential” analysis whereby it first assesses economic comparability of potential surrogates, Catfish Farmers said. But Commerce didn't demonstrate how that analysis was appropriate in view of the court’s remand order, it said.

“Regardless of the order in which the factors are considered, the agency's economic comparability analysis must be statutorily sound and reasonable overall,” the nonprofit catfish farmers group said.

Commerce also didn't explain why it looked to only a particular gross national income range for surrogate countries for Vietnam, Catfish Farmers said. Commerce also failed to describe how it considered other factors, such as expected data quality, economic diversity of manufacturing sectors and import data specificity, it said.

“Further, while Commerce views Indonesia's 2018 [gross national income] as too distinct from that of Vietnam's to merit Indonesia's inclusion on the list used here, Indonesia's 2018 [gross national income] was closer to Vietnam's than in multiple prior reviews in which the agency treated Indonesia as appropriately comparable,” the group said.