Trade Court Sends Back AD Review of Xanthan Gum From China
The Court of International Trade on April 19 remanded the results of an antidumping duty review on xanthan gum from China back to the Commerce Department. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ordered Commerce to reconsider its use of adverse facts available when it calculated a separate rate for Chinese producer Meihua, its use of a simple average in separate rate calculations., and whether Deosen Biochemical Ltd. and Deosen Biochemical (Ordos) Ltd. should be combined into a single entity.
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"Adverse inferences are not warranted 'merely by a failure to respond,' but only in instances in which Commerce reasonably expected that 'more forthcoming responses should have been made,'" Choe-Groves said. Commerce therefore failed to fulfill its statutory obligation by not swiftly informing Meihua of a deficiency in its submission or providing an opportunity for the producer to remedy its error before assigning the company a 154.07% AFA AD rate.
The court will also allow separate rate applicant Jianlong to continue its arguments regarding the separate rate calculation, despite finding that it did not exhaust its administrative remedies. Both Jianlong and Deosen have argued that the 77.04% separate rate assigned based on the average of the 154.07% AFA rate assigned to Meihua and the 0% rate assigned to Fufeng was not reasonably reflective of their potential dumping rate. Choe-Groves found that because the court is remanding the underlying AFA calculation for Meihua, the separate-rate respondents' issue will be addressed when Commerce reexamines the Meihua rate.
Finally, the trade court found that Commerce erred when it declined to conduct a collapsing analysis for Deosen for the period of review. Choe-Groves said that the failure was an abuse of discretion because Commerce rejected Deosen Biochemical's evidence that it did not ship xanthan gum during the period of review.
(Meihua Group v. U.S., Slip Op. 23-53, CIT # 20-00069, dated 12/13/22; Judge: Jennifer Choe-Groves; Attorneys: Mark B. Lehnardt of David L. Simon for plaintiff Meihua; Chunlian Yang of Alston Bird for consolidated plaintiff Deosen Biochemical; Robert G. Gosselink of Trade Pacific for consolidated plaintiff Jianlong Biotechnology; Kelly A. Krystyniak for defendant U.S. government)