Commerce Reverts to Partial AFA for Collapsed Entity, Lowers AD Rate
The Commerce Department reduced the antidumping duty rate for a collapsed entity, made up of exporter Siemens Gamesa, affiliated supplier Windar Renovables and five of Windar's subsidiaries, from 73% to 28.55% after reverting to the use of partial adverse facts available for the entity (Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy v. U.S., CIT # 21-00449).
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On remand, Commerce applied a 40.96% rate, which represents the "highest non-aberrational transaction-specific margin," only to the entity's U.S. sales which "matched to comparison market models with misreported weights." In addition, the agency used the "highest factoring expense observed at verification for all U.S. sales, except those sales for which we obtained sales-specific information," due to the entity's failure to "accurately describe its payment process for sales to its customers in both Sweden" and the U.S.
The Court of International Trade in October sent back the case, which contests the antidumping duty investigation on wind towers from Spain, finding that Commerce can't assign an individual company's AFA rate to an entire collapsed entity (see 2310120031). In the investigation, Commerce used Windar's AFA rate for its failure to respond to a quantity and value (Q&V) questionnaire for the collapsed entity.
The court said that any decision involving the collapsing of the entities would render Windar's rate null and void and that Siemens Gamesa didn't fail to provide information to Commerce when it reopened the record during the first remand proceeding.
Taking another look at the collapsed entity, Commerce decided to use partial AFA for the entity's misreported control numbers (CONNUMs) and unreported factoring expenses. Regarding the misreported CONNUMs, Commerce said the entity "failed to report accurate weight product characteristics data for its wind towers sold to Sweden and, correspondingly the CONNUMs for those towers, for over one third of its comparison market sales." The agency found that, as a result, the entity's information couldn't be verified.
Commerce said it can't "condone inattentiveness, carelessness, or inadequate record keeping," particularly for CONNUM-related data. As a result, it used partial AFA for the entity's U.S. sales that matched to comparison market models with misreported weights.
The agency also used partial AFA regarding the entity's failure to report the discounting and factoring expenses that it incurred on sales. Commerce used "the highest factoring expense observed at verification for all U.S. sales, except those sales for which we obtained sales-specific information; for those latter sales, we used the verified figures in our calculations." The agency didn't make an adjustment for the "unreported discounting expenses," since the entity's failure to report these expenses was "conservative."