US Mattress Makers Defend Public Availability of Financial Statements Used in AD Review
The Commerce Department legally found that financial statements submitted by antidumping duty petitioners from Indian mattress maker Emirates Sleep were publicly available, the petitioners, led by Brooklyn Bedding, argued in comments backing Commerce's remand results at the Court of International Trade. While the trade court found that the agency did not adequately explain whether the statements were publicly available, Commerce properly explained on remand that they were via the Indian government's Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Zauba Corp., a web service that takes information on Indian businesses that is all a matter of public record, Brooklyn Bedding said (Ashley Furniture Industries v. United States, CIT # 21-00283).
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Commerce added in its explanation that financial statements do not need to be free of charge to be considered publicly available. Exporter Ashley Furniture Industries disagreed with these findings, claiming that users of the MCA website needed to provide an "Income Tax PAN" to download the statements, precluding them from being publicly available. "Even if true, this is irrelevant as the MCA website is not the only identified public source of the documents," Brooklyn Bedding responded.
CIT remanded Commerce's final results in the 2019 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on mattresses from Vietnam in February, sending back Commerce's use of Emirates' financial statements (see 2302240055). Judge Timothy Reif said Commerce failed to address whether the version of the statements that was available in the subscription database -- the only source of the statements -- was complete, and that the agency did not address evidence showing Ashley wasn't able to confirm the availability of the statements from a public source that can be verified on the record.