Exporter, Petitioner Push Back on Commerce Remand Results in Turkish Aluminum Foil Case

A petitioner and an exporter responded Oct. 17 to the Commerce Department’s results on remand of a review of common alloy aluminum sheet from Turkey (see 2409060031), which saw the department mostly maintain its earlier positions (see 2405080048) (Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT # 21-00616).

The remand addressed three issues: the calculation of exporter Assan Aluminyum's duty drawback, the method by which Commerce calculated its raw material costs and the interpretation of the exporter’s “hedging” offset. Assan pushed back against the department’s treatment of the first two issues, while consolidated plaintiff Aluminum Association Trade Enforcement Working Group took issue with its determination regarding the third.

Commerce made a slight adjustment to Assan’s duty drawback that meant Assan’s antidumping margin jumped slightly, from 2.28% to 2.3%. Assan called the department’s new method both “a reversal of course from its previous position regarding the drawback adjustment” and inconsistent with its treatment of Assan’s inward processing certificates (IPCs) in a parallel investigation in which the exporter is also a mandatory respondent.

In that review, the department reopened the record so that Assan could submit the Turkish government’s closure documents for all the IPCs it used during the period of review -- not just those closed during that time, the exporter said. Assan filed a request to do the same in this review, but Commerce refused, it said.

It argued the trade court has held that “exports that are in different administrative review periods that occur on the same [IPC] are entitled to the same adjustment,” so Commerce should apply the calculation it used in the parallel investigation.

Assan also again pushed back against Commerce’s method of calculating its raw material costs.

For all of the exporter’s products, the department again chose to weight average Assan’s raw material aluminum premium costs -- adjustments to the exchange price that reflect the “conversion cost plus profit of the raw material supplier.” Assan said the department shouldn’t have set a single period of review costs for raw materials, however, due to “related differences in other production costs, such as labor” between the variations of metal premiums.

But the department failed to address this in its remand results, the exporter said. Instead, Commerce “simply compared the cumulated data” and found any differences to be ‘driven by factors other than the difference in the physical characteristics,’ without identifying what those factors may be,” it said.

In turn, the Aluminum Association disagreed with the department’s continued decision to include Assan’s “hedging” offsets in its costs of production rather than its sales. The trade court remanded the issue for more explanation or reversal after Commerce changed its mind during litigation, admitting that the Aluminum Association’s argument was reasonable, but still chose to count the hedging as production costs as it originally did during the investigation.

Commerce said that Assan’s records deal with its hedging gains in its income statement, so the department, by statute, must consider hedging in the same category.

“Assan's normal records, however, include both its audited income statement and its audited cash flow statement,” the petitioner said. “The Department has not explained why Assan's audited income statement is more authoritative that Assan's audited cash flow statement.”