Vehicle Importer Says ITC Erred in Critical Circumstances Determination
The International Trade Commission failed to adequately consider "key market data" when reaching an affirmative critical circumstances determination in the injury proceeding on low speed personal transportation vehicles from China, importer Vexas, doing business as Atlas, said in an Oct. 14 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Vexas v. United States, CIT # 25-00206).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
During the injury proceeding, the commission unanimously said the subject goods were injuring the U.S. industry, though its affirmative finding of critical circumstances only proceeded with a 2-1 vote. Atlas noted that to support a critical circumstances finding, the ITC must find that imports were "massive" over a "relatively short period" after the filing of the petition and that importers are "likely to undermine seriously the remedial effect" of the AD/CVD orders.
Per the AD/CVD statutes, the ITC is to consider "the timing and the volume of the imports, whether there has been a rapid increase in inventories of the imports, and any other circumstances indicating that the remedial effect of the order will be seriously undermined."
In the present case, the commission didn't adequately consider key data, including "data related to the timing of imports and seasonality in the industry, import and inventory volumes relative to the overall size of the market, and the economic performance of the U.S. industry," the complaint said. The ITC also didn't properly "account for or consider the impact of the extremely high duty rates applicable to subject imports, particularly those assigned by Commerce in these investigations," namely the 292% China-wide AD rate and the 41.14% CVD rate, the brief said.