US Explains to CIT Its Different Standards for AD and CVD Successor Findings
The Commerce Department's ruling that GreenFirst Forest Products is the successor to Rayonier A.M. Canada (RYAM) in a changed circumstances review as part of an antidumping duty proceeding does not affect the agency's decision finding that GreenFirst is not RYAM's successor in the parallel countervailing duty proceeding, the U.S. said. Responding to GreenFirst's notice of supplemental authority at the Court of International Trade, the government said standards for initiating a CCR differ for AD and CVD cases (GreenFirst Forest Products v. U.S., CIT # 22-00097).
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"Commerce promulgated its Court-approved countervailing duty successorship methodology to address the different purposes of the antidumping and countervailing duty statutes," the brief said. "For antidumping duties, Commerce analyzes the pricing behavior of the proposed successor. In contrast, for countervailing duties, Commerce determines whether subsidization of the predecessor carries over to the successor. Because of the significant differences in these analyses, the antidumping duty proceeding is an inappropriate comparison here."
Canadian lumber company GreenFirst said its purchase of lumber mills from RYAM caused GreenFirst to be a successor-in-interest, which would confer RYAM's "non-selected" countervailing duty rate on softwood lumber goods from Canada rather than the 14.19% all-others rate (see 2304040038). The U.S. disagreed, pointing to evidence of significant changes in GreenFirst's operations, ownership, corporate or legal structure (see 2302170042). As a result, the agency refused to initiate a CVD CCR for GreenFirst.
In its brief on its grant of the successor finding for GreenFirst in the AD proceeding, the U.S. said Commerce in AD cases looks at whether the predecessor and successor share the same management, production facilities, supplier relationships and customer base. In CVD cases, the agency instead focuses on subsidization. "Given the different focal points of these reviews, Commerce determined that the findings in antidumping reviews may be different from, and irrelevant to, the findings in countervailing duty reviews," the brief said.