The U.S. Department of Commerce last week filed remand results with the U.S. Court of International Trade in litigation over the 2009-10 administrative review of shrimp from the People’s Republic of China. PKR brought the case in 2011 on behalf of the Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Action Committee (AHSTAC), an association of domestic producers of frozen warmwater shrimp. In November 2012, the CIT agreed with AHSTAC that Commerce had improperly selected India instead of Thailand as the surrogate market economy country for China. However, that issue became moot when Commerce in January 2013 obtained CIT permission to consider evidence of likely transshipment and affiliation misrepresentation by the Chinese exporter Hilltop International that AHSTAC placed on the record of the 2010-11 administrative review.
Commerce in April 2013 applied the adverse facts available (“AFA”) statute to change Hilltop’s antidumping duty margin from 0% to 112.81%. The CIT in July 2013 affirmed the ability of Commerce to apply AFA based on Hilltop’s material misrepresentations, but ordered remand for the agency to “corroborate” the 112.81% rate as the AFA statute requires. In last week’s remand results, Commerce examined sales data from the 2004 antidumping duty investigation of shrimp from China and found that the largest exporter in that proceeding had a significant volume of sales dumped in the United States at margins exceeding 112.81%. Accordingly, Commerce maintained its assignment of that rate to Hilltop. Comments on the remand results are due later this month.
