Shelving Unit Maker Contests Data Used to Calculate Constructed Value in AD Investigation

Antidumping petitioner Edsal Manufacturing Co. filed a complaint at the Court of International Trade on June 4 contesting the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on boltless steel shelving units prepackaged for sale from India. Edsal said Commerce erred in accepting untimely information from exporter Triune Technofab regarding the calculation of the exporter's constructed value profit (Edsal Manufacturing Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00087).

After finding that Triune's home and third country market sales weren't viable for review, Commerce solicited information to calculate the exporter's constructed value. Edsal said it submitted CV profit and expense data in the form of financial statements from Indian firm Mekins Industries and Malaysian company Eonmetall Group. Triune, the investigation's sole respondent, submitted financial statements from seven companies, one of which was from TMTE Metal Tech.

The TMTE data was obtained from the company's owner and was accompanied by a letter from the owner consenting to have the financial statement put on the record as a public document. Edsal said Triune failed to request an extension of time to submit the public versions of the statements "once they became publicly available."

Edsal told Commerce it was unable to access TMTE's statements "in the public domain," making it unusable for calculating the respondent's CV. TMTE's statements later became publicly available at which time Triune sought to add to the record a printout from the Indian Ministry of Corporate Affairs website showing the data was publicly available, which Commerce accepted. The agency said all of the submissions, save for TMTE's, were "unsuitable for calculating CV profit."

In its complaint, Edsal argued that Commerce violated the "plain language of its regulations" in "accepting Triune’s submission of new factual information concerning the TMTE financial statements after the deadline for interested parties to submit CV profit information." The agency also erred in finding that the TMTE statement was publicly available, the brief said. "The only copy of the financial statement on the record is the version obtained by Triune directly from TMTE’s owner."

Edsal also argued on behalf of the viability of the Mekins financial statement, which Commerce rejected for containing evidence of the "receipt of countervailable subsidies." The agency "has a longstanding practice of relying on financial statements that show evidence of the receipt of subsidies, a practice that is consistent with the statute," the brief said. "Commerce failed to explain its departure from this practice."