The Court of International Trade today issued a remand for the Commerce Department to reconsider the labor rate used to calculate duties in the fifth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on shrimp from Vietnam. Picard Kentz & Rowe brought the case on behalf of the Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Action Committee, an association of domestic producers of frozen warmwater shrimp, challenging the $0.21 hourly wage rate derived exclusively from Bangladeshi data. The Commerce Department had preliminarily calculated duties using a $1.09 hourly rate that averaged multiple country data, but abruptly changed course late in the review.
Chief Judge Pogue directed the agency to better explain or otherwise reconsider its labor rate. The Commerce Department was faulted for failing to address the findings that compelled the agency to previously calculate duties using multiple country data, as well as for ignoring record evidence that the Bangladeshi data understated the value of Vietnamese labor. Remand results are due in January 2013.
