CIT OKs Third-Country Data for Major Inputs, not Commerce's Interpretation of Transactions Disregarded Rule

The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 17 opinion made public Feb. 24 upheld the Commerce Department's interpretation of the Major Inputs Rule to allow the use of third-country surrogate data as "information available" for finding the cost of production of a major input bought from an affiliated non-market economy-based supplier.

Ruling on a number of first-impression arguments in an antidumping case, Judge Gary Katzmann also held that Commerce's interpretation of "market under consideration" in the Transactions Disregarded Rule to only mean the country under investigation "is unreasonably inflexible and inconsistent with prior practice."

The court further ruled that the agency's continued inclusion of NME and export-subsidizing countries in the surrogate data was not congruous with other reasoning in the AD case's final determination. Katzmann said Commerce's findings that the financial statement it picked was publicly available and sufficiently complete "were unreasonable." The judge also dismissed one count of the complaint, filed by Best Mattresses International challenging the use of Cohen's d test, saying use the test did not have affect the dumping margin.