Commerce Slashes AD Rate for Brazilian Honey Exporter on Remand at CIT

The Commerce Department on remand at the Court of International Trade lowered the dumping margin for exporter Apiario Diamante Comercial Exportadora, known as Supermel, from an 83.72% adverse facts available rate to a 10.52% mark. The agency made the switch in the AD investigation on raw honey from Brazil after incorporating the court's finding that Supermel's failure to reconcile its costs with its beekeeper suppliers' costs was immaterial to the calculation of the AD rate (Apiario Diamante Comercial Exportadora v. United States, CIT # 22-00185).

The trade court rejected the use of AFA against Supermel in June, finding that minor discrepancies between data submitted from two small, unaffiliated beekepers and Supermel can't stand as a reason to scrap the use of the exporter's acquisition costs as a proxy for the costs of production (see 2405310043). The court also rejected Commerce's claims that Supermel's response to five questionnaire inquiries were deficient.

Supermel said in the investigation it couldn't supply the proper production cost data since it sourced its honey from thousands of independent, small beekeepers. As a result, Commerce used the respondent's acquisition costs as a stand-in for its production figures, testing the validity of the data by reviewing data on two of Supermel's largest suppliers. Commerce found discrepancies in the beekepeers' data and Supermel's, which the court rejected as insignificant.

On remand, Commerce said "the complete reconciliation of Supermel’s data to its suppliers’ reported data is immaterial to the analysis of Supermel’s data, based on other reliable and verifiable evidence on the record." The agency reverted to the AD rate it set for Supermel in the investigation's preliminary results, which was 10.52% and relied on the exporter's information.

The petitioners, the American Honey Producers Association and Sioux Honey Association, challenged Commerce's remand results, arguing that the agency should continue to use AFA and drop an offset to Supermel's direct material costs. The petitioners said Commerce should deny Supermel's offset to its direct material costs since the company failed to show its unprocessed honey prices include the input credit from "the Program of Social Integration ... and the Contribution for the Financing of Social Security."

The petitioners said the offset should be rejected since the company didn't tie the offset value to its accounting records, the offset value wasn't linked with any corresponding trial balance account number and the supplier invoices don't separately itemize taxes paid for the programs. Commerce rejected these arguments, finding that the record doesn't support any of the three claims.