AD Respondent Contests US 'Smoke and Mirrors' Response to Reconsideration Bid at CIT

The government is deploying a "smoke and mirrors approach" to distract the Court of International Trade from exporter Chandan Steel Limited's arguments in a case related to the 2018-19 antidumping duty review on Indian stainless steel flanges, Chandan argued March 25 (Kisaan Die Tech Private, Ltd. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 21-00512).

Replying to U.S. opposition to the company's motion for reconsideration of an order sustaining the adverse facts available antidumping duty rate set against the exporter, Chandan accused the government of distracting the court from the exporter's "actual arguments."

The trade court sustained the 146.25% AD rate last year after finding that the company repeatedly misreported its foreign sales information and costs of production for those foreign sales (see 2312110043). Chandan asked the court to reconsider its decision, urging reconsideration of the materiality of the company's errors in reporting window period sales, the company's misreporting of production costs, and misreporting of prices and duty refunds.

In response, the U.S. said CIT didn't need to resolve any disagreements pertaining to the allocation method for the reporting of the COP and from reporting of "gross unit price, quantity discounts, other discounts, and duty refunds" because even if Chandan were correct on these two points, "the repeated misreporting of its comparison market database" supported the use of AFA.

Addressing the government's points, Chandan said the use of AFA was "impermissible" for 99.6% of sales for which there was "full information" with which the agency could have calculated an AD rate. The exporter said both the trade court and the U.S. failed to show that the missing information was "significant," as required by the AFA statute, reading this word in the statute "right out of the law," the brief said.

It's not enough to just explain "how window reporting periods work," as the U.S. did, Chandan claimed. The court and government must still show that there was "missing information to calculate the dumping margin as to these U.S. sales under Commerce’s established dumping margin methodology, which has not been done as to 99.6% of U.S. sales, as Chandan extensively documented with specific record cites, as to which there was no real response. Rather, there is outright refusal to look at the record," the brief said.

Chandan said the U.S. and the company are like "the proverbial two ships passing in the night," since it failed to address the claim that AFA was not warranted for 99.6% of sales. "The United States is repeatedly promoting manifest error by this Court."