Indian Aluminum Exporter Says It Wasn't Target of Own Government's LTAR Coal
The Commerce Department was wrong to equate captive power industries and utilities in its determination that an Indian aluminum exporter had received coal for less-than-adequate remuneration, the exporter said Jan. 5 in the Court of International Trade (Hindalco Industries Limited v. U.S., CIT # 23-00260)
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The exporter, Hindalco Industries, filed a Jan. 5 complaint challenging Commerce’s 2020-2021 administrative review of a countervailing duty on common alloy aluminum sheet from India, for which it was a mandatory respondent. Hindalco received a CVD rate of 37.9% for 2020 and 32.43% for 2021 because Commerce claimed it received LTAR coal from Coal India Limited, owned by the Indian government.
Relying on Coal India Limited’s internal classification system, Commerce decided that the electricity power industry, which includes captive power plants the department determined were owned by Hindalco, was among a group of “power generating industries” that was a “predominant user of the subsidy.” In this, the department erred, Hindalco said.
The department’s view that the two classifications shared similarity in process and output “ignored substantial record evidence” that power industries classified as “utilities” outputted electricity, whereas Hindalco’s “captive" power industries don't, the exporter said.
“There is no justification to consider CIL’s ‘power (utility)’ and ‘power (captive)’ classifications to be a ‘group of industries’ for purpose of the de facto specificity analysis,” it said.
Without the grouping, Indian utilities were by far the biggest consumers of Coal India Limited coal. LTAR coal provision was therefore not specific to Hindalco, the exporter said.
“The record indicates CIL’s power (utility) classification reflects the electricity industry in India that is by far the single predominant user of CIL’s coal,” it said. “As such, because Hindalco falls within CIL’s ‘power (captive)’ and ‘others (non-coking)’ classifications, not CIL’s ‘power (utility)’ classification, the record provides no basis to conclude that Hindalco was a member of an industry or group of industries that was a predominant user of the alleged provision of coal for LTAR.”