Indonesian Glycine Exporters Say CBP Has No Evidence of Evasion

Multiple Indonesian glycine exporters argued July 29 that they have provided plenty of evidence they didn’t transship glycine from China. CBP and a petitioner, they said, are simply relying an a separate finding of affiliation and, otherwise, pure speculation (Newtrend USA v. U.S., CIT # 22-00347)

Plaintiffs Newtrend USA, Starille and Nutrawave were again found by the Commerce Department in a remand redetermination in January to have been evading antidumping and countervailing duty orders on Chinese glycine (see 2401190046). The government sought the remand to consider the Federal Circuit's recent decision in Royal Brush, allowing all parties to place new, publicly accessible information on the record (see 2310230022).

But there was no substantial evidence to back up this claim, the exporters said.

Instead, in “an attempt to claim that CBP’s determination is not based on speculation, the Defendant and Defendant-Intervenor continue to espouse unsupported theories and misstate the record,” they said.

CBP claims to be relying on three “pillars” of evidence, they said. But one of them is a finding that the three are affiliated with Chinese exporter New Trend Group -- and CBP has previously ruled that another company that “employs Chinese workers, has Chinese ownership, and sources equipment and certain materials from China” was not transshipping because those connections weren’t “material to the issue of evasion,” they said.

Another pillar is “generic import data” that showed “basket categories of amino aids were imported into indonesia without any link to” their alleged Chinese exporter, they said. They argued CBP was improperly elevating this “speculative” data over direct evidence provided by themselves and the Indonesian government (see 2406260055).

“Over 500 amino acids exist in nature,” they said.

The government also mischaracterizes the record, claiming that glycine shipments from China to Indonesia “mysteriously increased just prior to the [Chinese exporter’s] factory beginning its export of glycine to the United States” -- but this doesn’t show up anywhere, they said.

A claim about a bill of lading was also false, they alleged.

“During the underlying remand, Plaintiffs put forward significant information that publicly available bill of lading data is unreliable and does not meet the substantial evidence standard, as CBP itself acknowledged with respect to port of lading in this investigation and generally in other investigations,” they said.

CBP, they said, has illegally treated similar parties and evidence across proceedings differently. They cited the agency’s investigation on aluminum extrusions from the Dominican Republic, in which CBP held that generic import data that only recorded basket categories wasn’t evidence of transshipment.