Commerce Disregarded Potential for Manipulation of CVD Margin, Petitioner Tells CIT
The Commerce Department disregarded the potential for countervailing duty respondent CS Wind Vietnam to manipulate its CVD margin through its relationship with its Korean parent company, plaintiff Wind Tower Trade Coalition (WTTC) said in Sept. 7 comments on Commerce's remand results. Submitting its arguments to the Court of International Trade, WTTC said Commerce's use of CS Wind Korea's reported sales value in the sales denominator was inconsistent with the agency's regulations and past practice (Wind Tower Trade Coalition v. U.S., CIT #20-03692).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
The case concerns the 2018 CVD review of utility scale wind towers from Vietnam. WTTC filed its suit to primarily contest two elements of the CVD review: the denominator in the subsidy calculation and Commerce's use of certain evidence for its subsidy calculation for the Import Duty Exemptions on Imports of Raw Materials for Exporting Goods program. Finding mixed success in the lengthy opinion, WTTC also saw the trade court sustain the agency's positions relating to its decisions not to apply adverse facts available over the Import Duty Exemptions program and to use the sales of CS Wind Korea -- CS Wind Vietnam's parent company -- for the subsidy calculation (see 2204050041).
On the latter point, Commerce found CS Wind Vietnam was the manufacturer with sales conducted by CS Wind Korea, so the agency used the parent company's sales for the denominator of the subsidy calculation. The U.S. characterized WTTC's challenge of this move as amounting to whether the subsidy should have been attributed to the sales value of products made by CS Wind Vietnam and exported by CS Wind Korea or to the amount of a tolling fee for processing services. The judge found Commerce properly used CS Wind Korea's sales, acting consistently with its regulations and past cases in doing so.
WTTC expressed its discontent with the ruling, arguing there's potential for manipulation because Commerce improperly attributed CS Wind Vietnam's subsidies -- a move supposedly inconsistent with 19 C.F.R. Section 351.525(b)(6)(i) and the multinational firm provision of Commerce's regulations that require the agency to attribute a subsidy to products made by a firm within the country of the government that provided the subsidy.