AD Petitioner Says Exporter Could Match Movement Expenses on Sale-Specific Basis

Antidumping duty petitioner Daikin America on Sept. 9 opposed the Commerce Department's remand results finding it wasn't feasible for respondent Gujarat Fluorochemicals to report its movement expenses on a transaction-specific basis. Daikin said the agency wrongfully said Gujarat's grade-based allocation was as specific as it could be and didn't cause "inaccuracies and distortions" (Daikin America v. United States, CIT # 22-00122).

In the AD investigation on granular polytetrafluorethylene from India, Commerce preliminarily granted a constructed export price offset on the grounds that the normal value level of trade (LOT) was at a more advanced stage of distribution than the level of trade for the CEP. Granting the offset in the final determination, Commerce acknowledged that Gujarat failed to provide an adequate quantitative analysis on the exporter's claimed differences in channel-specific functions and related intensity levels.

The trade court rejected this position, finding that Commerce's supplemental questionnaire to Gujarat gave the exporter a chance to remedy its insufficient quantitative analysis (see 2403190037). On remand, Commerce reversed its decision to grant the CEP offset though it stuck by its decision to find that the exporter properly reported various U.S. movement expenses on an allocated basis instead of a transaction-specific basis as originally requested by the agency (see 2407120016).

Daikin argued that, contrary to Commerce's findings, "it was feasible for" Gujarat to "report transaction-specific movement expenses, and the exporter's allocation "did cause inaccuracies and distortions." The agency's findings "were largely based on conjecture and did not address the bulk of the evidence that Daikin raised during the investigation," the brief said.

The petitioner said it submitted evidence, namely, an export customer complaint register, which showed that Gujarat tracks merchandise batch numbers. This evidence contradicts the company's claim it couldn't calculate expenses, since goods from India can't be tracked or identified after they are stored in U.S. warehouses. The agency ignored the evidence and "instead implausibly speculated that this document could reflect information derived from a party other than" Gujarat, the brief said.

In its remand, Commerce said there's no indication of how batch numbers are associated with specific shipments, yet it conceded that the record did show the respondent's ability to link movement expenses with specific shipments, Daikin said. The agency's "ultimate finding" was that it would merely be "difficult" for Gujarat to link batch numbers to specific sales, but "this does not exempt" the company from "using information in its records to calculate transaction-specific movement expenses."

Daikin lastly argued against Commerce's finding that Gujarat's grade-based allocation method didn't cause inaccuracies or distortions on the basis of its review of only a single product code from the respondent. The petitioner said this "ignored the evidence of distortions" raised before Commerce and CIT, "such as variation in movement expenses for products with identical physical properties and shipping methods."