Exporter Supports Commerce’s Motion to Remand Decision in Duty Drawback Adjustment Case
A Turkish aluminum foil exporter Dec. 22 sought expedited consideration of a request for a voluntary remand by the Commerce Department and challenged concerns raised by domestic petitioners in a case involving a duty drawback adjustment on its products (Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT # 21-00616).
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In its analysis, Commerce should have only included exports covered by closed inward processing certificates in the denominator of its super unit calculation, whereas it instead included all of the company’s U.S. imports in the denominator while the numerator only described the exporters’ closed IPC duty exemptions (see 2311070032), antidumping duty respondent Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret said in its January 2022 complaint filed at the Court of International Trade. After the exporter raised several other, more recent decisions by Commerce in support of its own proposed methodology, the agency sought remand to reconsider its calculation (see 2311270064).
Assan asked Commerce’s motion be considered quickly by the court “given the dispositive nature of the duty drawback issue in this case.” It said it continues to oppose Commerce’s duty drawback calculation, arguing it was inconsistent with recent precedent.
Assan focused on issues raised by domestic petitioners Aluminum Association Trade Enforcement Working Group in their opposition to the remand motion. The evidence provided by Assan of Commerce more recently calculating duty drawback adjustments using the methods Assan described, the petitioners had said, was currently being appealed because it was contrary to the ruling statute’s plain language.
Existence of an appeal against Assan's proposed method was not evidence of its illegality, Assan said. In contrast, it said, "Commerce has repeatedly and thoroughly explained its rationale for rejecting Petitioners’ methodology."
Assan also denied that its real dispute was with Commerce’s standard practice of limiting its duty drawback numerator to closed inward processing certificates. The petitioners claimed this was the fundamental issue at play in the case, calling Assan’s proposed methodology “an attempt to reverse Commerce's court-approved methodology that relies on ‘closed’ inward processing certificates.”
Assan denied that this was the case. The only reason it brought additional evidence of Commerce’s standard practice limiting its duty drawback numerator to closed inward processing certifications’ duty exemptions, Assan said, was to discuss “the corresponding change to the denominator [the] use of that numerator requires.”
“Though Petitioners work hard to complicate and confuse the issue, this simple mathematical concept has been repeatedly recognized by Commerce,” it said. “Here, the numerator selected by Commerce is duties exempted under a closed certificate. The corresponding denominator must therefore necessarily consist of sales under that same closed certificate.”