Indonesian Yarn Exporter’s AD Rate Drops After Commerce Reluctantly Reverses AFA Finding

The Commerce Department "under protest" notified an Indonesian polyester textured yarn exporter of specific deficiencies in a questionnaire response it provided and gave it the chance to address them. As a result, the department reduced the exporter’s dumping margin from 26.07% to 9.20% (PT. Asia Pacific Fibers v. United States, CIT # 22-00007).

The antidumping duty review’s all-others rate, meanwhile, dropped to 8.72%.

Commerce hadn’t been able to conduct a verification visit to respondent PT. Asia Pacific due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, in lieu of it, it said it required the exporter to answer another questionnaire. But Asia Pacific’s questionnaire response contained “numerous significant inconsistencies which resulted in discrepancies with previously reported information,” it said. As a result, the department hit it with adverse facts available for its costs and sales data.

The Court of International Trade remanded Commerce’s inference in December (see 2312130031). CIT Judge Richard Eaton ordered the department to give Asia Pacific a “reasonable” chance to address the deficiencies and issue the exporter a verification report, as it hadn’t done so before.

Now, “no noted deficiencies remain with respect to Asia Pacific’s [In Lieu of On-Site Verification Questionnaire] Response,” Commerce said. Rather than calculate a new rate, the department said it assigned the exporter the preliminary determination’s rate.