United States Court of International Trade

Slip Op. 20-63

Before the Court in T. T. International Co. v. United States, et. al., Court No. 19-0071, Slip Op. 20-63 (May 11, 2020) was a challenge to Commerce’s final results in an administrative review of the antidumping duty order on hydrofluorocarbon blends from China. T.T. International Co. (“TTI”) argued that Commerce erroneously selected Mexico as the primary surrogate country, used import data from Mexico that yielded aberrational surrogate values (“SV”), and that the agency erroneously rejected certain financial statements. Plaintiff also challenged the 285.73 percent margin assigned to it as commercially and economically unrealistic, contrary to legal standards. For the following reasons, the Court sustained Commerce’s results.

The Court declined to review Commerce’s selection of Mexico as the surrogate country because TTI failed to exhaust administrative remedies with this argument before Commerce. The Court then moved onto the SV selection. Commerce is to use to use “the best available information to value factors of productions” (“FOP”). Id. at 12. The Court said that just because TTI had identified an alternative surrogate country, Commerce “has broad discretion to determine the best available information.” Id. at 13. “Even if reasonable minds may disagree, the Court cannot say that Commerce’s” determination is unsupported by substantial evidence. Id. at 16. Next, the Court moved on to the rejection of surrogate financial statements. “Commerce selects financial statements based on specificity, contemporaneity, and quality of the data.” Id. at 20. The Court said Commerce reasonably rejected TTI’s surrogate statements because they were incompletely translated. The Court then moved onto the final issue, if the assigned dumping margin was contrary to legal standards. The Court reviewed the relevant statutes for determining a dumping margin for products from a non-market economy and said that Commerce “consistent with its statutory mandate, … reasonably arrives at TTI’s dumping margin.”  As such, Commerce’s determinations were sustained.