CIT Remands AD Case for Failure to Give Exporter Chance to Remedy Deficiencies

The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 12 opinion remanded the Commerce Department's antidumping investigation into polyester textured yarn from Indonesia. In the proceeding, the agency did not conduct on-site verification due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Judge Richard Eaton found Commerce's failure to produce a verification report prior to issuing its final determination was illegal. As a result, Asia Pacific was "blindsided" by the use of adverse facts available, which led to a 26.07% AD rate.

The judge rejected Asia Pacific's request that Commerce be forced to conduct either an on-site or remote verification, instead ordering the agency to report the "methods, procedures, and results" of verification and give Asia Pacific a reasonable chance to address any deficiencies Commerce found.

In a separate opinion the same date, CIT's Judge Jane Restani granted the government's request for a remand in a case on the 2021 countervailing duty review of solar products from China. The U.S. asked for the remand to reconsider its use of Descartes data in calculating the ocean freight benchmark in the review.