Malaysian Wind Tower Exporter Sues Commerce Over Refusal to Grant EVA
In a May 1 complaint, a Malaysian exporter of utility scale wind towers took issue with several decisions made by the Commerce Department in a 2021-2022 countervailing duty administrative review, including its refusal to grant an entered value adjustment (EVA) and its choice of surrogate market (CS Wind Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00079).
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Exporter CS Wind Malaysia said in its complaint that it had met all of the criteria to receive an EVA based on the sales of its products made by an affiliate, CS Wind Korea, also a party to the suit. It argued the department should have allocated its countervailable subsidy over CS Wind Korea’s sales as well as its own.
The exporter also claimed that Commerce shouldn’t have, in CS Wind Malaysia’s rate, countervailed Malaysia’s Licensed Manufacturing Warehouse program, which exempts the duties usually paid on imported raw materials so long as those raw materials will be used solely to manufacture future exports.
“The requirement in 19 C.F.R. 351.519 that the Government of Malaysia must demonstrate that it has a system in place to verify that all imported inputs are consumed in the production of exported merchandise and in what amounts, or else Commerce will presume that a countervailable benefit is conferred by the amount of import duties that would otherwise be due, was unreasonable, as applied in this administrative review, and otherwise contrary to law,” it said.
CS Wind also argued that it couldn't have received any benefits from the program during the period of review due to “uncontroverted record evidence” that it didn’t import anything other than “a tiny amount of scrap sales.”
Third, the exporter said that Commerce should have used Turkish surrogate market values, not Singaporean ones, in its calculation of CS Wind Malaysia’s electricity costs. Malaysia’s electricity prices aren’t comparable to Singapore’s, it said.
And finally, CS Wind pushed back against the department’s benchmark calculation of Malaysian land prices -- with a simple average -- to determine whether or not the company rented industrial land in Penang at less than fair remuneration.
It asked the Court of International Trade to remand the review.