A New York lumber distributor sent a letter May 11 to the Commerce Department urging negotiations to begin on a new softwood lumber agreement, citing rising prices and market instability since the previous antidumping and countervailing duty suspension agreements expired in October 2015. “While this agreement is not the ultimate solution to price volatility, reenactment of the agreement will contribute to needed stability in the marketplace,” Belknap Lumber said in the letter, which was added by Commerce to the record of ongoing AD/CVD administrative reviews on softwood lumber from Canada on May 12.
The Commerce Department decided against excluding water-soluble thermal paper and phenol-free jumbo roll thermal paper from an antidumping duty investigation into thermal paper imports from German, Japan, South Korea and Spain, in a May 5 preliminary scope memorandum. In deciding not to exclude both product types from the antidumping duty order, Commerce cited deference given to the petitioners of the AD case when defining the scope of the order. Petitioners in this investigation, Appvion Operations, Inc. and Domtar Corporation, opposed the proposed scope exclusions.
Following a review of interested party comments, the Commerce Department maintained its finding that Italian pasta maker Newlat Food S.p.A. is not the successor-in-interest to Delverde Industrie Alimentari S.p.A. following a merger of the two companies. In a May 4 issues and decision memorandum that accompanied Commerce's final results of a changed circumstances review, the agency found that, despite Newlat's Dec. 31, 2019, acquisition of Delverde, the entire executive staff, production, supplier relationships and customer base of Newlat differs from pre-merger Delverde's. “We further recommend finding that Newlat may not receive the company-specific cash deposit requirements previously assigned to Delverde, but instead shall continue to be subject to the cash deposit requirements for all-other producers and exporters,” the memo said.
The Commerce Department's preliminary application of an adverse facts available rate for a mandatory respondent to more than 40 non-selected respondents in an antidumping duty administrative review on stainless steel flanges from India violates the agency's obligation to calculate accurate rates, the lawyer for some of those non-selected respondents said in a May 4 letter to the agency. Peter Koenig of Squire Patton criticized the agency's practice of selecting a limited number of mandatory respondents in antidumping reviews, finding AFA on the respondents, then applying the erroneously reached higher dumping rate to all other respondents. He noted that, in a recent case involving Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group, CIT found that this use of Commerce's "Mandatory Respondent Exception" goes against its statutory intention, which was to determine an "accurate all-others rate, based on a weighted average of rates determined for mandatory respondents" (see 2104300079). "Commerce should accurately calculate Chandan’s dumping margin, if not for Chandan (as should), but then for the 44 other Indian companies to whom Commerce is applying the Chandan dumping margin," Koenig's letter said. Chandan, the mandatory respondent, was assigned a 140.38% antidumping duty rate in the preliminary results of the review issued in February, and that rate was also extended to the non-selected respondents.