Commerce Continues to Say Germany Is Dutch Mushroom Exporter's Largest 3rd-Country Market

The Commerce Department continued to use German third-country comparison market data in the antidumping duty investigation on mushrooms from the Netherlands on remand at the Court of International Trade. Addressing the court's concern about whether exporter Prochamp's sales to Germany were actually sold in Germany, the agency said the record lets Commerce "reasonably estimate the percentage of German-language-labelled products sold to Prochamp’s largest German customer," which then may have been sold downstream in another German-speaking country "(i.e., Austria)" (Giorgio Foods v. United States, CIT # 23-00133).

The agency added that the enhanced record also let it consider the "relative size of the German market accounting for potential Austrian consumption." As a result, Commerce said these conclusions don't conflict with its prior finding that Prochamp's German shipments were "significantly larger than the shipments of merchandise consumed in Frnace (or Israel)" -- other third-market countries up for consideration.

The result of the remand is an unchanged zero percent dumping rate for Prochamp.

In the investigation, Commerce needed to use a comparison market because Prochamp's home market sales made up less than 5% of its U.S. transactions. The agency picked Germany as the comparison market, since Germany was Prochamp's largest third-country market. The court took issue with this selection, since Prochamp's German sales were only made to a multinational retailer and were actually sent to a warehouse outside of Germany, where they just as easily could have been meant for another German-speaking market (see 2407260023).

On remand, the agency reopened the record to "quantify and account for the portion of the German market total which may reasonably reflect this heretofore unquantified amount of non-German consumed sales." The agency added information on the number of retail stores operated by Prochamp's largest buyer in both Austria and Germany, population data for Germany and Austria, information on mushroom consumption in Germany and Austria, and data on French-speaking populations outside France.

Commerce said this data "reflects that the combined Austrian and German population of 92.156 million during the POI breaks down to 83.2 million Germans (90.28 percent) and 8.956 million Austrians (9.72 percent)" and that total mushroom consumption in both countries amounts to 175,179 metric tons consumed in 2021, with nearly 90% in Germany and just over 10% in Austria. In addition, over 92% of the retail locations that Prochamp's largest buyer sells to are in Germany, while only 7% are in Austria. The German market is "significantly larger" than the French or Israeli markets, the agency said.