Commerce Prorates CVD Rate on China's EBCP Based on US Buyers That Verified Nonuse

The Commerce Department prorated the countervailing duty set on exporter The Ancientree Cabinet Co. in the countervailing duty investigation on wooden cabinets and vanities from China to account for the percentage of its U.S. customers that failed to verify nonuse of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program (Dalian Meisen Woodworking Co. v. U.S., CIT # 20-00110).

Submitting its third remand results to the Court of International Trade on Nov. 12, Commerce lowered Ancientree's CVD cash deposit rate from 13.33% to 5.06% and calculated individual CVD rates for the exporter's U.S. buyers. However, the agency said that the cash deposit rate has been superseded by the cash deposit rate given to Ancientree based on the 2022 review of the CVD order.

In July, the trade court bucked Commerce's use of total adverse facts available pertaining to the EBCP for the third time, noting that many of Ancientree's U.S. customers certified that they didn't use the program (see 2407310024). The court told the agency to set a customer-specific CVD rate that excludes the EBCP subsidy amount for the U.S. buyers that verified nonuse of the program. And 21.56% of Ancientree's U.S. sales by volume were to customers that didn't verify nonuse.

As instructed, Commerce created customer-specific rates for all of Ancientree's U.S. customers, but the agency said it didn't use the rates to establish "prospective customer-specific cash deposit rates." Commerce said such a move would be "inappropriate" because it violates the Trade Act of 1930 and the agency's regulations regarding business proprietary information. Since cash deposits are public and the identity of individual customers is proprietary, the agency said it can't publish the cash deposit rates for individual buyers.

Instead, Commerce said it will tell CBP to "revise the amount of cash deposits already collected on those entries" using the individual rates. This will let Commerce collect the CV duties on a customer-specific basis, "while also taking into account any duty offsets for the EBCP already provided to Ancientree" in the parallel antidumping proceedings, the brief said.

To account for the EBCP offset in the AD proceedings, Commerce varied the cash deposits for six different time periods. For periods where no AD proceeding was in place, the agency imposed a 13.33% cash deposit rate for non-verified customers and a 2.79% rate for verified customers. For the period where the first AD review was in place, Commerce applied the EBCP offset, raising the cash deposit rate for verified customers to 7.28%.

However, in the second AD review, Commerce didn't apply the EBCP offset and so, for entries subject to the second CVD review and second AD review, the agency kept the standard 13.33% and 2.79% rates.

Lastly, Commerce revised the all-others rate in light of Ancientree's new 5.06% rate, taking a simple average of the rates for exporters Ancientree, Meisen and Rizhao Foremost Woodwork Manufacturing Co. to get an 18.17% rate.