Carrier Bag AD Respondent Rails Against Use of AFA Over Data Reporting
The Commerce Department erred when using adverse facts available over the reporting of various Malaysian inland freight data in antidumping duty respondent Euro SME's home market and U.S. sales databases, the respondent argued in an Aug. 19 brief at the Court of International Trade. Euro SME further railed against Commerce's use of AFA over the reporting of certain sales data kept in the normal course of business (Euro SME v. United States, CIT #22-00108).
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The case concerns the 2019-2020 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on polyethylene retail carrier bags from Malaysia. In the review, Commerce assigned Euro SME an AFA rate over its Malaysian inland freight data reported in the home market and U.S. sales databases. In its motion for judgment, the respondent argued that the record "is replete with evidence that Euro SME cooperated to the best of its ability at all times in the now-contested proceeding." The respondent said this is no small feat given the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns imposed by the Malaysian government.
Euro SME argued that the alleged discrepancies in the freight data between the home market and U.S. sales data "were insignificant and immaterial," and "could have been remedied by minor changes to Commerce’s margin calculation programming and use of information already on the record of the proceeding."
The respondent further argued against the use of AFA over certain sales data kept in the normal course of business. "This was unreasonable, given that Euro SME does not rely on actual weight in the normal course of business, such that other bases of measurement that were used, such as standard weight or actual number of pieces sold and produced, could have been used," the brief said. "Moreover, the difference between actual weight and standard weight reported by Euro SME was relatively minor, and thus does not support the larger revisions used by Commerce in the Final Results for freight allowances."