Mexican Rebar Supplier Challenges Commerce's AFA Application in AD Duty Review

The Commerce Department made multiple errors in its treatment of Grupo Simec during an antidumping duty review on steel concrete reinforcing bar (rebar) from Mexico, including the incorrect application of adverse facts available to respondent Simec, Simec said in an Aug. 8 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Grupo Simec, et. al. v. United States, CIT #22-00202).

Simec said it had difficulty in responding to the questionnaires during the review period due to COVID-19 restrictions, the deaths of three of its accountants, and the fact that the 15 entities "collapsed" into Grupo Simec did not have common accounting or management software. Simec said Commerce partially granted its requests for time extensions but then unfairly ruled that Simec's responses were inadequate.

Simec argued that the subsequent application of adverse facts available was incorrect and capricious, that Commerce failed to calculate a dumping margin for Simec based on Simec’s own provided information, and that Commerce failed to grant Simec's extension requests while granting those of the other mandatory respondent in the review, Deacero, even when Commerce itself delayed.

Finally, Simec argued that Commerce selected adverse facts that bear "no relationship to commercial reality" and resulted in "highly distorted" results. In particular, "the use of the 66.7% rate from the 7-year-old investigation is 46 times greater than the most recent verified dumping rate found for Simec and 34 times the average calculated rate over the prior 7 years," Simec said.