Chinese Tire Exporters Say Commerce Deviated From Standard Practice for Freight Costs

In a motion for judgment, several Chinese tire exporters argued that the Commerce Department’s calculation of their antidumping duty rate in a recent administrative review misrepresented a mandatory respondent’s costs after Commerce applied a single per-unit expense for all boat freight without adjusting for distance (Giti Tire Global Trading v. U.S., CIT #24-00083).

Exporters led by Giti Tire Global Trading contested Commerce’s final results in its 2021-2022 review of passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China, saying that they misrepresented actual freight costs by disregarding differences in transportation distance.

Giti argued that Commerce’s approach was inconsistent with its standard practice -- multiplying freight charges by the shorter of two distances, either the supplier-to-factory route or the port-to-factory route. It said it had provided Commerce adequate distance data in its filings to enable Commerce to calculate a per-kilogram, per-kilometer rate, but that Commerce failed to use it.

The exporter also challenged Commerce’s decision to instruct CBP to apply the China-wide 75.46% AD rate to some of its entries. It said the department’s questionnaire instructions had told it to report only entries with a sales date within the period of review. As a result, it said, the exporter didn’t report other entries that came in during that time but didn’t have sales dates contemporaneous with the period of review.

But given that its U.S. sales database reflected all relevant transactions with sales dates in that time frame, Giti said, Commerce’s decision to default unreported entries to the China-wide rate was unnecessary and unfair.

It asked the court to remand the final results so that Commerce could recalculate the boat freight expense based on the per-kilometer rate submitted by Giti and exclude unreported entries from the China-wide rate assessment.