No AD for Indian Steel Fittings Exporter After Commerce Conducts Delayed On-Site Visit

After a second remand, the Commerce Department said Feb. 22 that despite conducting a previously impossible on-site verification of the sole mandatory respondent for an AD investigation on forged steel fittings from India, its negative finding remained unchanged (Bonney Forge Corporation v. U.S., CIT #20-03837).

As a result of the visit, the department said it didn't have to consider “any potential reliance interests of the petitioners,” as it had been ordered to do when the Court of International Trade sent the investigation results back.

CIT said in its remand that the department, because it didn't conduct an on-site verification of Indian forged steel fittings exporter Shakti during the COVID-19 pandemic, “failed to acknowledge [petitioner] Bonney Forge’s reliance interests” (see 2308210025). Bonney Forge brought suit in 2020 saying that Commerce relying only on questionnaires and facts otherwise available to reach its determination went against its long-standing practice (see 2104270024).

Commerce has now complied with court order by conducting the visit, it said, and “because Commerce has conducted verification consistent with its past practice, the petitioners’ reliance interests are no longer implicated.”

Other issues Bonney Forge raised about the veracity of Shakti’s information were irrelevant, as the court had only remanded the investigation results for proper consideration of its reliance interests, Commerce said.

“Part of Commerce’s past practice is the wide latitude Commerce has in determining what topics to address at verification, the procedures for verifying, and when it is satisfied with the information presented at verification and reached the same conclusion,” it said.

However, it said it would address some of Bonney Forge’s claims. It said Commerce officials had toured Shakti’s production facilities and witnessed each step of its manufacture process; had discussed the exporter’s methods of allocating material, labor and overhead to its products with its employees; and had “traced the quantities and values Shakti used to calculate the submitted processing costs for the unique products included in selected CONNUMs to Shakti’s accounting system and to the underlying source documents.”

The department also said it disagreed that “Shakti admitted that the petitioners were correct” that the exporter manufactured its products differently for different markets and thus misrepresented its costs. Shakti uses three different processes depending on both the market and the availability of its machines, the department said, and it said it continues “to find Shakti’s clarification reasonable.”

“During the plant tour, we observed the machining process and observed that the machines are adjacent to each other and then we walked through the cost allocation worksheets with Shakti’s officials,” it said.