After 27 Years, Commerce Releases Results of 1996 AD Investigation on Mexican Tomatoes

In remand results, the Commerce Department assigned four Mexican tomato exporters an adverse facts available dumping margin of 273.43% for a 1996 investigation that has been suspended for 22 years. The department, which resumed its inquiry in 2019, said that those exporters -- one of whom it couldn't even track down -- had failed to participate in verification to the best of their ability (Bioparques de Occidente v. U.S., CIT # 19-00204).

Several respondents provided information that could have allowed the department to calculate dumping margins for them, but, finding that information incomplete, Commerce rejected it "in its entirety," it said.

The 1996 investigation on Mexican tomato exports was suspended several times between 1996 and the present. When the suspension agreement ended in 2019, the department attempted to restart its investigation with new respondents and information -- but the Court of International Trade found this unlawful, saying the statute was clear that Commerce must stick with the original investigation period when it resumes a suspended AD investigation (see 2404170046).

But much has changed since 1996. The original 1996 investigation selected the seven then-largest tomato exporters as mandatory respondents, but only one, Camalu, is still operational under its original name, Commerce said. Four others were sold off to or merged with other corporations, and Commerce couldn’t track down any information about the remaining two at all, it said.

As a result, it calculated individual margins for Camalu and two other former mandatory respondents using information provided by their new owners and its 1996 preliminary determination, it said, though the latter two both received partial AFA.

For the three, the department also said it eliminated “zeroing” in the calculations of their margins. Zeroing, the practice of setting an exporter’s negative margin for an individual sale to zero percent, was successfully challenged before a panel of the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body in 2005, it said.

For each, Commerce conducted a differential pricing analysis and determined to apply the average-to-transaction method to Camalu and another company, Echavarria. Camalu received a 2.81% margin; Echavarria, a 26.39% margin; and the remaining company, Tamazula, an 18.58% margin. The all-others rate was set at 17.09%. To go into effect, Commerce’s remand results must first be sustained by the trade court.

The other four exporters, Commerce said, had their margins set at 273.43% using total AFA.

The parties were on notice that the investigation would be resumed at the end of the 1996 suspension agreement, it said. None of them told Commerce, either in 1996 or in 2002 when the investigation did briefly resume, that they were concerned about potential verification, it added.