Honey Importer Challenges Commerce's Cost of Production Calculations in Trade Court

The Commerce Department erred in its calculations of production costs during an antidumping duty investigation on raw honey from Argentina, exporter Nexco said in an August 8 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Nexco, S.A. v. U.S., CIT #22-00203).

During the investigation, Commerce limited its examination of mandatory respondents to two companies, ACA and Nexco, out of a total of 24 exporters. Nexco said it notified Commerce that it's an exporter and processor of honey and not a beekeeper. Commerce ultimately selected two of Nexco’s beekeepers and one of Nexco’s middlemen to respond to questionnaires.

When Commerce published its determination, it did not rely on the beekeeper costs to compute product costs for honey resold by Nexco, and instead applied its affiliated supplier methodology, even though the beekeepers and middlemen were not related to Nexco, which was a measure "without precedent," the complaint said.

Commerce then used its high-inflation methodology for sales comparisons between Nexco's third-country market sales and U.S. sales, even though both were denominated in U.S. dollars. Nexco said that, with Commerce's permission, it substituted German sales for Argentinian sales because its home country sales made up only a small percentage. Nexco says it was inappropriate to apply inflation in Argentina during the investigatory period to sales made in U.S. dollars outside the country.