AD Petitioner Challenges Commerce's Surrogate Value Picks on Remand in AD Suit on Fish Fillets

Antidumping duty petitioner Catfish Farmers of America on Aug. 15 opposed the Commerce Department's remand results in a suit on the 2017-18 administrative review of the AD order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam. In comments submitted to the Court of International Trade, the petitioner contested Commerce's conclusion that India offered better quality surrogate value data than Indonesia for generally valuing the fish fillets' factors of production (Catfish Farmers of America v. U.S., CIT # 20-00105).

In the review, Commerce picked India as the main surrogate but used various Indonesian data to value certain factors of production, refusing to consider India as the main surrogate nation. After having its surrogate value picks remanded, the agency stuck by its decision to use India as the main surrogate and said it didn't need to consider all countries that broadly meet the definition of "comparable" on an economic basis (see 2406040025).

The trade court in its remand order told the agency to explain its use of data from the Indian publication Fishing Chimes in finding that the Indian data represents a broad market average. The court found that the AD petitioners cited evidence showing that 80% of pangasius production in India solely came from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, but that Commerce mistakenly tried to claim that the data pulled from all over India.

On remand, the agency said it doesn't disagree that the data wasn't sourced from all of the villages that were covered by the study throughout India, but it said it doesn't find that this fact "renders the data unrepresentative or otherwise unusable."

In response, the Catfish Farmers argued that Commerce incorrectly stuck to its guns. The petitioner said to "fully understand" why the remand fails to "establish that the data at issue reflect broad market averages," it's key to review the record, which has the English-language Fishing Chimes publication and a "variation" of the data published in the Telegu-language publication Chepala Sandadi. The Telegu version has data that isn't included in the English version, which the agency relied on to value the fingerlings and feed inputs.

Both reports show that the "hard data regarding prices for whole live fish, fingerlings, and feed are extremely limited," the petitioner said. The data is "too limited to permit a reasonable conclusion that they reflect broad market averages." Commerce's defense of the data fails to "respond adequately to the Court’s concerns," nor does it "grapple with record information showing that the Fishing Chimes/Chepala Sandadi data are not representative of broad market averages in general, or for the three main inputs."

The petitioner also challenged Commerce's surrogate labor statistics and wage rate data. The court remanded that time because the agency used "non-contemporaneous Indian labor/wage rate data," and on remand, Commerce failed to provide an adequate explanation as to why it was valid to continue using this data, the brief said.

"Not only are the Indian data woefully out of date, it is not clear that they are industry-specific, unlike the Indonesian data, which are both contemporaneous with the [period of review] and specific to 'agriculture' and 'manufacturing' workers," the brief said.