Trade Updates for Week of September 4, 2019
/United States Court of International Trade
Before the Court in China Mfrs. Alliance, LLC et. al. v. United States, Slip Op. 19-115, Court No. 15-00124 (September 3, 2019) were remand redeterminations, made pursuant to a previous Court order, in regards to a challenge to the final results of an administrative review of the antidumping duty order on pneumatic off-the-road tires from the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”). Plaintiffs, Guizhou Tyre Co., Ltd. and Guizhou Tyre Export and Import Co., Ltd., (collectively, “GTC”) were the mandatory respondents in the review. On the second remand in the case, Commerce recalculated GTC’s export price (“EP”) and constructed export price (“CEP”) by eliminating deductions for irrecoverable VAT, reconsidering its calculations of GTC’s brokerage and handling and ocean freight costs, and eliminating additional cost elements it determined to have been double counted. For the following reasons the Court sustains Commerce’s remand redeterminations.
On remand, “the Court directed Commerce to recalculate EP and CEP without making a reduction in the EP and CEP starting prices for irrecoverable VAT. Commerce, in response, eliminated its irrecoverable VAT deduction,” despite protesting the Court’s order. Id. at 8. The Court had also ordered Commerce to ensure that no costs were double counted for seven specific charges between(1) brokerage and handling charges and ocean freight charges or (2) ocean freight charges and U.S. inland freight charges. On remand, the agency reopened the record and determined four of the charges only appeared on one out of twenty four quotes Commerce used and therefore were not double counted. Commerce determined the three remaining charges, Automated Manifest System (“AMS”) Charges, Documentation Charges, and Traffic Mitigation Fees, could have been duplicated in the data. Citing a surrogate company’s logistics and supply chain glossary and half of the quotes gathered by the agency, Commerce determined that the AMS charges and Documentation charges were not double counted with U.S. freight charges.
However, the agency did find that Traffic Mitigation Fees were related to domestic freight charges and therefore removed from calculations on ocean freight.