Catfish Exporter Says Commerce Set Liquidation at Vietnam-Wide Rate Without Explanation

An exporter of frozen fish fillets from Vietnam brought a case to court contesting the 2021-2022 antidumping review on its products. In its complaint, it said the Commerce Department had wrongly denied it byproduct offsets for “fresh broken meat” and “fresh fish waste by-products” and illegally liquidated some of its entries at the “punitive” Vietnam-wide rate instead of its own, lower, separate rate (Can Tho Import Export Seafood Joint Stock Company v. U.S., CIT # 24-00080).

Exporter Caseamex’s case involves the 19th administrative review on its products and joins a number of suits already ongoing challenging the 17th (see 2404180031) and 18th (see 2405090043) reviews.

Commerce wrongly calculated a per-kilogram rate of 18 cents for Caseamex during its final results of the recent review, 4 cents higher than the duty calculated in its preliminary results, because it failed to consider several of the exporter’s byproduct off-sets, the exporter said.

The department did so after petitioner Catfish Farmers of America argued that Caseamex “failed to provide all of the required documentation” for them, even though the exporter said it hadn’t made any errors. The allegation, it said, was based on the petitioner’s misunderstanding of the factual record. Commerce disagreed with Catfish Farmers that it was a “reporting failure” but rejected a portion of Caseamex’s byproduct reporting anyway, saying the exporter hadn’t provided “certain key documentation.”

“Contrary to Commerce’s findings, the record reflects, inter alia, that Caseamex provided a full explanation of and documentary support for its byproduct offset,” Caseamex said. “Commerce simply failed to consider all of this evidence.”

The department also issued “incorrect and otherwise vague instructions” regarding liquidation of Caseamex’s entries to CBP, the exporter said. It said Commerce told CBP to liquidate some entries at the 18 cent rate and others at the “very high" Vietnam-wide rate of $2.39 per kilogram, even though it “never even mentioned or explained the use of this Vietnamwide assessment methodology for Caseamex in its Final Results or Final Decision Memo, as it was required by law to do.”