Commerce Chose Wrong Surrogate Country in Refrigeration Gas Case, Domestic Producers Argue

The Commerce Department allegedly erred by not including countries producing like products as possible surrogates in its administrative review of the antidumping duty order on 1,1,1,2-Tetrafluoroethane (R-134a) from China, the American HFC Coalition and some of its members -- Arkema, The Chemours Company, Honeywell International and Mexichem Fluor -- said in their Nov. 6 complaint at the Court of International Trade (The American HFC Coalition v. U.S., CIT # 23-00210).

The coalition sued to force Commerce to reconsider its decision to choose Romania as the primary surrogate country for China in the investigation. The coalition said that Commerce relied upon the financial statements of a Romanian producer of various chemicals, none of which contained fluorine.

The coalition would have preferred Mexico as the chosen surrogate and said that it told Commerce that Mexico was both "economically comparable to China" and the only potential surrogate that produced R-134 or any comparable fluorocarbon refrigerant gas.

Commerce instead selected Romania, reasoning that the country was a significant producer of "comparable merchandise." The coalition argued that the only evidence cited by Commerce was statistics showing that certain countries on Commerce's initial surrogate list exported R-134a or other fluorocarbon refrigerant gases during the period of review but no evidence of "actual production." The department overly relied on inference instead of hard evidence in its surrogate choice, the coalition said.

Finally, Commerce incorrectly didn't even consider Mexico despite a "comparable" level of economic development and the department's “sequencing procedure" that calls for an analysis of economic comparability before merchandise comparability, the coalition said.