CIT Remands Extreme AD Rate from 2010-11 China Mushrooms Review

The Court of International Trade ordered the Commerce Department to rethink the 308.33% antidumping duty rate assigned to Blue Field in the 2010-11 administrative review of preserved mushrooms from China (A-570-851). Blue Field said the unusually high AD duty rate, which was calculated from data and not assigned as punishment, was skewed by the agency’s valuation of its rice straw and cow manure inputs. The high “surrogate values,” used because Commerce doesn’t trust Chinese input prices, drove up the agency’s estimate of Blue Field’s domestic prices, which resulted in the company’s U.S. prices looking extremely cheap (and dumped) by comparison. Blue Field pointed out that the Colombian rice straw prices used by Commerce were higher than Colombian prices for actual rice, and that the Colombian fertilizer prices used by Commerce were not specific to cow manure, and approached the price of hamburger meat. The court agreed that something was fishy with Commerce’s numbers, and remanded for agency reconsideration.