Domestic Garlic Petitioners Say Citric Acid Not Used as Preservative
Defendant-intervenor Fresh Garlic Producers Association said Aug. 8 that the Commerce Department properly found importer Green Garden Produce circumvented an antidumping duty order on fresh garlic from China (Green Garden Produce v. United States, CIT # 24-00114).
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Almost exactly a year after importer Green Garden’s motion for judgment arguing that its imported garlic chunks weren’t covered by the order because they were preserved in citric acid (see 2408090042), the domestic petitioner said in its reply that the record doesn’t support that fact.
It also claimed that Green Garden’s scope application “appeared to be drafted specifically to test the limits of Commerce’s analysis in prior scope rulings concerning the amount of processing that is required for a product to fall outside the Order’s scope.”
For example, it said, when CBP told the importer that its large garlic chunks fell under the order, Green Garden just asked its exporters to chop up the garlic into smaller chunks.
The AD order on Chinese-origin fresh garlic does cover some forms of prepared garlic as well, including garlic that is “peeled, fresh, chilled, frozen, provisionally preserved … but not prepared or preserved by the addition of other ingredients or heat processing” (see 2403270050). The order also covers garlic that is “whole or separated into constituent cloves,” but not, as another scope ruling has found, minced garlic.
It said Green Garden was wrong to claim that its garlic chunks were “expressly excluded” by the order. The importer relied on an overly broad understanding of Wheatland Tube Co. v. United States, it claimed, which involved a product that was both “expressly and unambiguously” exempt from AD and countervailing duty orders; on the other hand, the fresh garlic AD order is ambiguous, the Fresh Garlic Producers Association argued.
The petitioner also said Green Garden didn’t provide any evidence during the inquiry to show that its production process used citric acid as a preservative. Rather, it said, agreeing with Commerce, the importer “demonstrated the citric acid was used in connection with the blanching process that precedes the freezing process.”
Neither of the mandatory respondents in the circumvention inquiry said in their questionnaire responses that the citric acid was meant to “prepare or preserve” their garlic chunks, it said, calling these responses “the most probative evidence available on the record.”
Green Garden, in turn, was attempting to prop up its preferred classification using only “generic evidence regarding citric acid,” but none of this evidence actually shows the garlic chunks in question were preserved using the citric acid, it said.
The Fresh Garlic Producers Association did agree that the department “could have been more explicit” in finding specifically that the respondents’ questionnaire responses demonstrated the importers didn’t use citric acid as a preservative. But it said that Commerce’s rationale could “reasonably be discerned,” and in such cases the court will “uphold a decision of less than ideal clarity.”
Commerce also was right that there were only “minor differences” between in-scope merchandise and Green Garden’s garlic chunks, “with the sole difference being the trimming of the cloves’ ends (for large [individually quick frozen (IQF)] garlic chunks) and the slicing of cloves into smaller pieces (for small IQF garlic chunks),” it said.