Tapered Roller Bearing Exporter Challenges AD Review at CIT

Exporter Shanghai Tainai Bearing Co. and importer C&U Americas brought a suit to the Court of International Trade on Feb. 20 challenging the 2021-22 review of the antidumping duty order on tapered roller bearings from China. The five-count complaint alleges a host of errors in the review, including on Commerce's use of partial adverse facts available (Shanghai Tainai Bearing Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00025).

In the review, Commerce levied partial AFA against the exporter for incomplete factors of production information regarding various inputs. In the complaint, Shanghai Tainai said "there is no missing information." The agency valued the inputs using surrogate values for finished inputs, making the factors of production "not relevant," the complaint said. AFA is not allowed "in the absence of missing information," the company argued.

Shanghai Tainai also contested Commerce's deduction of Section 301 duties from the exporter's U.S. price and the agency's alleged failure to include all payments received by the exporter's customer "as part of the price paid." Commerce didn't include payments from the customers for Section 301 duties that exceeded the amount of Section 301 duties actually paid, the complaint said. The "capping of payments received from Customers by the amount of 301 duties from U.S. price is arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion," the brief said.

Shanghai Tainai also contested Commerce's efforts to deduct "masked" dumping, challenging the agency's differential pricing analysis which found a pattern of prices that "differ significantly among purchasers, regions, or time periods." The company said there was "no variance among a significant proportion of" control numbers during the review period and a "super majority were sold at only two prices during" the review period.

"Where there is no more than 1 price change during the POR for a supermajority of the CONNUM’s at issue, there can be no valid finding of a pattern of prices that differ significantly among purchasers, regions or time periods," the complaint said.