Mexican Exporter Rails Against Use of Total AFA Rate in Antidumping Review
The Commerce Department violated the law by hitting mandatory antidumping review respondent Grupo Simec with a total adverse facts available rate of 66.70%, non-selected respondent Grupo Acerero argued in an Aug. 26 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The total AFA rate was disproportionate since Grupo Simec put forth "significant effort" in responding to Commerce's questionnaires, the brief said. Grupo Acerero further railed against its own 33.35% rate that was found by simply averaging the total AFA rate and a zero percent rate given to the other mandatory respondent (Grupo Acerero v. U.S., CIT #22-00230).
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The case concerns the 2019-2020 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Mexico in which Grupo Simec and Deacero were tapped as the two mandatory respondents. In its brief, Grupo Acerero said in the past five administrative reviews, it never received a dumping margin above 7.12%. In the present review, Commerce hit Grupo Simec with the total AFA rate based on an alleged failure to cooperate.
The agency said the respondent failed to act to the best of its ability in correcting errors identified by Commerce and by not submitting information by the established deadline. Both Grupo Simec and Grupo Acerero contested this rate administratively. Grupo Acerero said using the total AFA rate was disproportionate given the efforts the respondent had taken to comply with Commerce's requests. Grupo Simec said "it cooperated to the best of its ability amid the Covid-related losses of its antidumping accountants and the submission of questionnaire responses that statutorily qualified for use by Commerce to calculate a margin."
The four-count complaint contests the decision to use the total AFA rate along with Commerce's move to use the AFA rate without conducting a proportionality analysis, evaluating the economic reality of the industry and looking into whether the petition rate has any relevance. The non-selected respondent further challenged the agency's methodology for coming up with the 33.35% rate. "Commerce made other decisions in the Final Results resulting in an excessively high and erroneous final antidumping margin for Grupo Acerero that is not supported by substantial evidence on the record and is otherwise not in accordance with law," the brief said.