Activated Carbon Petitioners Dispute Ministerial Error Correction in Complaint
U.S. activated carbon producers Calgon Carbon Corporation and Norit Americas brought a complaint to the Court of International Trade on Feb. 21 claiming that the Commerce Department wrongly accepted an antidumping duty order administrative review mandatory respondent’s allegation of a ministerial error. The allegation actually concerned “a methodological issue, not a ministerial issue,” they said (Calgon Carbon Corporation v. United States, CIT # 25-00028).
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They also claimed that the allegation had been untimely, as it should have been filed during administrative briefing, not after issuance of the review’s final results.
The ministerial error allegation, by mandatory respondent Ningxia Guanghua Cherishmet Activated Carbon Co., claimed that Commerce mistakenly used a surrogate value for lump coal instead of the surrogate value for bituminous coal in its calculation of the AD rate for the respondent, the petitioners said. But, the petitioners explained, the correct valuation of bituminous coal consumed by Ningxia Guanghua is a methodological issue, not a ministerial one.