Commerce Based Remand Results on Inaccurate Assumption, Mattress Petitioner Claims
In a heavily redacted public brief, a mattress petitioner pushed back on several complex conclusions reached by the Commerce Department on remand regarding an antidumping duty order review on mattresses from Indonesia (PT. Zinus Global Indonesia v. U.S., CIT # 21-00277).
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Specifically, petitioner Brooklyn Bedding said, the department based all its subsequent rulings on an erroneous presumption that importer Zinus U.S. had in fact possessed enough inventory to make the number of sales that they did during the period of review.
Commerce had previously determined otherwise, and, as a resut, included mattresses still in transit from exporter Zinus Indonesia as part of the importer’s available inventory (see 2309250018). But after the review results were remanded to let the parties address the issue (see 2402200057), it changed its tune; based on Zinus U.S.’s total inventory figures, no contradiction was present, it said, and it removed the in-transit mattress figures from its calculation.
Brooklyn Bedding disagreed with the change in its comments on the remand results. While Zinus U.S.’s total inventory numbers were enough to account for its total sales, this wasn’t true for each individual mattress model, it claimed -- as Commerce’s own data demonstrated, it said.
“The fact that the Department’s entire analysis was based on demonstrably false factual findings renders its entire determination unreasonable and thus unsupported by substantial evidence,” it said.
The petitioner also took issue with the methodology the department employed to estimate the number of Indonesian mattress orders Zinus U.S. had fulfilled each quarter of the period of inquiry. An estimate was necessary because the importer said it hadn’t tracked how many of the mattresses it had sold came from Indonesia compared with other countries, although Brooklyn Bedding expressed some suspicion regarding that claim.
When it prepared its most recent draft remand results, Commerce determined it would carry over the proportion of Indonesian mattresses Zinus purchased each quarter and apply it to the number of total mattresses it sold, Brooklyn Bedding said. However, it switched to another method offered by Zinus U.S. for its actual published results without giving any party the opportunity to comment, Brooklyn Bedding said -- using both those purchases and the proportion of Indonesian mattresses remaining in inventory at the end of each quarter to make the final estimate. It said that as a result, Zinus Indonesia, the exporter under review, received a de minimis AD rather than its draft 2.35% rate.
The department made the change on the incorrect rationale that using the initial method resulted in that same apparent mis-match between Zinus U.S.’s total mattress inventory and its total mattress sales, the petitioner said. It again argued that this is an inadequate basis, and it claimed that the initial method was used because Zinus U.S.’s inventory records couldn’t be trusted.
Brooklyn Bedding also argued that the department had failed to fully investigate the alleged fact that Zinus Korea had taken on some of Zinus Indonesia’s indirect selling expenses. Commerce claimed that those expenses were solely in the production realm, but this went against the department’s usual practice regarding allocating indirect selling expenses, it said.