AD Petitioner Gets 21 More Days to File Reply Brief in AD Case at CAFC
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Jan. 26 order gave defendant-appellee Mid Continent Steel & Wire until Feb. 22 to file a reply brief over the use of total adverse facts available rates for two non-cooperative respondents. The appellee said it needed the extra time due to "a significant volume of time-sensitive work arising from other cases being handled by" Mid Continent's counsel (PrimeSource Building Products v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2128).
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The case concerns an antidumping duty review on steel nails from Taiwan. Bonuts Hardware Logistics and Create Trading were picked as the mandatory respondents, but Bonuts did not respond to Commerce's questionnaires and Create said it didn't have any U.S. sales. Create was then dropped for Pro-Team Coil as a respondent, but Pro-Team also did not reply to Commerce's questionnaires. As a result, both companies were hit with an AFA rate from a previous review, and the non-selected respondents' rate was determined by weight-averaging the AFA rates.
In the CIT case, the plaintiffs didn't challenge the AFA rate given to Bonuts and Pro-Team but rather the use of the expected method and the agency's conclusion the all-others rate was representative of the appellants' actual dumping margin. However, the trade court relied on various court precedential opinions to recognize an "important assumption" built into Commerce's respondent selection, that the largest exporters by volume are meant to be representative of the non-selected companies. The court said the burden is on the plaintiffs to establish that the expected method should not be used (see 2206170040).