Apex Frozen Foods Private Ltd. v. United States
36 I.T.R.D. (BNA) 1333
Ct. Intl. Trade2014Background
- This case challenges Commerce’s final results in an administrative review of an antidumping duty order on frozen warmwater shrimp from India.
- Commerce assigned Apex Frozen Foods Private Ltd. a 3.49% antidumping rate for entries Feb 1, 2011–Jan 31, 2012, including non-mandatory respondents.
- The agency used an exceptional “targeted dumping” framework and the A-T vs. A-A methods (zeroing) to compute the rate.
- Apex argues Commerce lacked authority to use the targeted-dumping inquiry in a review, and that zeroing was misapplied to produce the 3.49% rate.
- The court sustains Commerce’s Final Results, rejecting Apex’s challenges and upholding the TD inquiry, the choice of A-T, and the zeroing approach in this proceeding.
Issues
| Issue | Plaintiff's Argument | Defendant's Argument | Held |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authority to conduct TD inquiry in a review | Apex contends TD inquiry is confined to investigations. | Commerce may apply TD inquiry in reviews to address targeted dumping. | Authority to conduct TD inquiry in reviews affirmed. |
| Meaningful difference analysis—A-A cannot account for targeting | Aetna argues A-A should be apples-to-apples with A-T and not zeroed. | Agency reasonably compared zeroed A-T to nonzero A-A to show targeting. | Proper meaningful-difference analysis upheld. |
| Use of A-T to all sales versus targeted sales | A-T should apply only to targeted sales. | A-T may be applied to the subject merchandise, including untargeted sales, where warranted. | Applying A-T to all sales was reasonable. |
| Zeroing reconciliation between A-A and A-T | Commerce’s differential zeroing raises inconsistencies. | Zeroing under A-T and offsets under A-A are permitted and justified case-by-case. | Commerce’s zeroing rationale sustained. |
| Seasonality and monthly averaging in targeting analysis | Seasonality should be considered in TD analysis. | Statute is silent on seasonality; not required. | Seasonality need not be addressed to meet TD inquiry. |
Key Cases Cited
- Timken Co. v. United States, 354 F.3d 1334 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (approval of zeroing as a reasonable aggregation method under A-T)
- U.S. Steel Corp. v. United States, 621 F.3d 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (offsetting in A-A method upheld; relevance to margins aggregation)
- Union Steel v. United States, 713 F.3d 1101 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (three-part rationale for scenario-specific zeroing in TD contexts)
- Beijing Tianhai Indus. Co. v. United States, 7 F. Supp. 3d 1318 (CIT 2014) (review on WTO-related zeroing issues; used for comparison doctrine)
- JBF RAK LLC v. United States, 991 F. Supp. 2d 1343 (CIT 2014) (TD inquiry and methodology considerations in reviews)
- Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi Ve Ticaret A.S. v. United States, 990 F. Supp. 2d 1384 (S.D. Ct. 2014) (seasonality/targeted dumping considerations in TD analyses)