Commerce Moves Consideration of Russia's ME Status to New Antidumping Investigation
The Commerce Department migrated its review of whether Russia is a market economy from one antidumping investigation to another, Commerce said in a Sept. 19 notice. Commerce directed parties that had already made comments on the changed circumstances review in the original AD investigation to resubmit their comments and factual information for consideration to the new AD duty investigation. These entities, which include EuroChem Switzerland, Russia's Ministry of Economic Development, CF Industries Nitrogen and Wiley Rein, have until Sept. 28 to submit their comments.
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Originally, Commerce initiated a changed circumstances review to look into the market economy status of Russia in the antidumping duty investigation on urea ammonium nitrate solutions from Russia. However, in this proceeding, the International Trade Commission found that the domestic U.S. industry was not injured from Russian urea ammonium nitrate solution imports, which means Commerce is now set to end the investigation.
To be able to continue looking into whether Russia is a market economy for the purposes of coming up with antidumping margins for Russian exporters, the agency shifted the CCR to the ongoing AD duty investigation on emulsion styrene-butadiene rubber from Russia. Commerce said it expects to publish the final determination in the ESB rubber from Russia investigation no later than Nov. 9, though the agency will not reconsider its calculation methodology for finding the AD margins in the investigation since there is not enough time.
The agency said that other interested parties may submit comments by Oct. 14. New comments can address the six factors that go into whether a country is a market economy: "(i) the extent to which the currency of the foreign country is convertible into the currency of other countries; (ii) the extent to which wage rates in the foreign country are determined by free bargaining between labor and management; (iii) the extent to which joint ventures or other investments by firms of other foreign countries are permitted in the foreign country; (iv) the extent of government ownership or control of the means of production; (v) the extent of government control over the allocation of resources and over the price and output decisions of enterprises; and (vi) such other factors as the administering authority considers appropriate."