Earlier this week, a federal judge here decided to reexamine the special anti-dumping taxes imposed on quartz surfaces manufactured in India.
The U.S. Commerce Department has until June 27 to develop a new plan in order to conclude a review of the tariffs that started in 2021, in collaboration with importers and manufacturers of quartz.
Judge Mark Barnett remanded the review back to Commerce on May 28 in a “slip review” from the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) in order to work out a procedure that resulted in a significant increase in tariff rates in 2022, only to have many of the adjustments turned back in early 2023.
The Commerce Department’s May 2022 decision to reject an Indian surface producer’s delayed document and revise a 3.19% tariff to rates ranging from 161.5% to 323% was the main focus of the court case.
The Antique Group, which consists of three companies, is the producer in question. The Commerce invited the Antique Group to provide additional information on its operations in the spring of 2022. On May 11, the Antique Group turned in its final paperwork after requesting two extensions.
The second extension, though, came with a 10 a.m. deadline. rather than the standard 5 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time associated with the majority of Commerce requests on that particular date. Commerce rejected the documentation that the Antique Group submitted on May 11 between 2:55 and 3:45 p.m.
Three times the Antique Group requested Commerce to reconsider, but no more action was taken by federal officials. Commerce then applied a 323.12% tariff on items from the Antique Group and a 161.56% tariff on 51 other Indian producers (sometimes referred to as the “non-selected companies”) in the summer of 2022, using the anti-dumping margins provided in the initial unfair-trade petition by American maker Cambria Company LLC.
Commerce lowered the tax on the 51 producers to the original 3.19% in January 2023 after a protracted re-examination, while the high tariff on products from the Antique Group remained in place. The Antique Group filed challenges, which were consolidated into a single case at the CIT, along with those from Cambria, other Indian producers, and American importers.
Barnett pointed out that Commerce might alter its customary timeframes, but the decision was made without enough justification from federal officials. He stated that Antique Group’s application would have been submitted on time had it not been for the early deadline, and that “no party questions that this untimely submission was inadvertent.”
The judge declared, “Commerce abused its discretion in rejecting Antique Group’s submission because it was irrational and not backed by sufficient evidence.”
Barnett further invalidated Commerce’s application of “certain specific transactions” mentioned in Cambria’s initial petition to support the high rate, and questioned Commerce’s use of “adverse facts available” (AFA) to impose the high tariff on Antique Group as a result of the late filing.
The judge’s decision stated, “The distinct characteristic of these sales indicates that they are not relevant for purposes of corroboration, even though Commerce is under no obligation to ensure that the corroborating sales, or the rate being corroborated, reflect Antique Group’s commercial reality.”
Additionally, Barnett discovered that Commerce was unable to defend its decision to bring back tariff rates in January 2023.
Commerce claimed at the time that the proposed 161.5% rates did not accurately represent the margins earned by the 51 Indian exporters for the course of the tariff review period, which ran from December 2019 to May 2021. Cambria countered that Commerce didn’t typically employ this strategy.
“Commerce’s deviation from the anticipated process for computing the non-selected
business rate is not substantiated by evidence, according to Barnett’s writing. “Any decision to deviate from the anticipated method must be reconsidered or further explained by Commerce upon remand.”