Commerce Erred in CVD Calculation on Wood Flooring From China, Brief Says

The Commerce Department's subsidy calculation errors in a countervailing duty review on multilayered wood flooring from China resulted in an inaccurate CVD rate for Fine Furniture and other Chinese wood flooring exporters, Fine Furniture argued in a March 9 motion for judgment af the Court of International Trade (Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00210).

Fine Furniture said that Commerce erred when it averaged UN Comtrade data and International Tropical Timber Organization data for Brazil and Peru to calculate the plywood benchmark when "the only reasonable methodology" was to use only the ITTO C/CC plywood grade prices. Commerce departed from its practice of using product-specific data in its benchmark calculations, Fine Furniture said. The company asked the court to remand the final results to Commerce for redetermination.

Fine Furniture also argued in support of overturning Commerce's use of adverse facts available for the Export Buyer's Credit Program subsidy for fellow exporter Riverside, because the Chinese government and Riverside cooperated in the underlying investigation. "The statute only allows Commerce to use facts otherwise available in reaching its determination in the event that necessary information is not available on the record, or an interested party failed to provide such information" which was not the case here, Fine Furniture said.

Fine Furniture argued that "information of the operation of the EBCP is not necessary to verify the mandatory respondents’ claim of nonuse of the program." Because the respondents did not use the program, Commerce's statutory duty to determine the extent of benefit the program provided is moot, Fine Furnitur said. Evidence showed that Riverside's U.S. customers did not benefit from the EBCP because Riverside confirmed that none of their nonaffiliated U.S. customers used the EBCP, Fine Furniture said.

In addition, Commerce failed to explain why it could not recognize Riverside's customers that submitted declarations of non-use of the EBCP and instead focused on the customers that did not respond. "Even if the Court upholds Commerce’s refusal to accept the declarations as evidence of non-use for all customers, it must still overturn Commerce’s refusal to accept them as evidence of non-use for those that did respond," Fine Furniture argued.

Three other motions for judgment were filed on the same day by other plaintiffs seeking remand. Consolidated plaintiff GreenHome requested that the court find against Commerce's calculation of the CVD rate assigned to Baroque, then the CVD rate assigned to non-selected respondents, including GreenHome, also should be discounted.