Background
Jiangsu Nova Intelligent Logistics Equipment Co., Ltd. and two other producers and exporters of certain steel racks from China challenged the Commerce Department’s final results in the eighth administrative review of a 2019 antidumping duty order. The review covered entries from September 1, 2022, through August 31, 2023.
Commerce selected Jiangsu Nova as a mandatory respondent and calculated an 11.18% weighted-average dumping margin. It assigned the same rate to plaintiffs Nanjing Jinshidai Storage Equipment Co., Ltd. and Hebei Nova Intelligent Logistics Equipment Co., Ltd.
Commerce used an average-to-transaction comparison method after conducting a differential pricing analysis. Plaintiffs challenged Commerce’s authority to use that analysis in an administrative review and disputed several features of the methodology, including its two-percent price-difference test and 33% ratio test. They also argued that Commerce had not given interested parties an opportunity to comment on the new methodology before issuing the final results.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of International Trade granted the government’s unopposed request for a voluntary remand without requiring Commerce to confess error. Commerce had replaced its Cohen’s d test with a new price-difference test shortly before issuing the final results, after the Federal Circuit’s mandate in Marmen Inc. v. United States foreclosed use of the Cohen’s d test when specified statistical conditions are not satisfied.
The court ordered Commerce to review and reconsider the final results after giving the parties an opportunity to comment on the new differential pricing methodology. Commerce must submit its remand redetermination within 90 days. Because of the complexity of the issues, the court gave plaintiffs and the defendant-intervenor 60 days—rather than the ordinary 30 days under USCIT Rule 56.2(h)—to file comments opposing or partially opposing that redetermination.
Key Takeaways
- Commerce may obtain a voluntary remand to reconsider an agency determination without confessing error.
- The court did not resolve plaintiffs’ substantive challenges to differential pricing or the average-to-transaction method.
- Commerce must reconsider the final results within 90 days, and plaintiffs and the defendant-intervenor will have 60 days to submit opposition comments afterward.
Why It Matters
The order requires Commerce to revisit an antidumping determination that relied on a newly adopted differential pricing methodology introduced too late in the administrative review for party comments. The remand creates an administrative record addressing that methodology and could affect the 11.18% margins assigned to the three plaintiff producers and exporters.
The decision also leaves unresolved the broader statutory and methodological objections raised by plaintiffs, including whether differential pricing may be used in administrative reviews after Loper Bright and whether Commerce adequately justified its new price and ratio tests.