Chinese Golf Cart Exporter Says It Missed Deadline Due to Prior Counsel Error
The other mandatory respondent in the Commerce Department’s antidumping duty and countervailing duty investigations on Chinese-origin golf carts, Xiamen Dalle, challenged the critical circumstances finding Commerce reached regarding it in the CVD investigation in an Oct. 14 complaint. It said its prior attorney had failed to submit certain data, then tried to cover up their mistake (Xiamen Dalle New Energy Automobile Co. v. United States, CIT # 25-00205).
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The department declined to find critical circumstances for Xiamen in its accompanying AD investigation, a decision the orders’ petitioner is appealing in its own suit (see 2510140038).
Xiamen Dalle said the affirmative critical circumstances in the CVD proceeding was based on an adverse inference. It allegedly missed the submission deadline for its December 2024 quantity and value questionnaire response, it said.
But it provided that data to its “prior counsel” prior to the deadline, it said. Its attorney timely submitted the data for the AD investigation, but not the CVD investigation, it said.
The critical circumstances determinations were published June 23, 2025, it said. Only then did it discover that it had been hit with critical circumstances in the CVD investigation, it said; Commerce never provided notice of the error at any point prior.
But when it asked its attorney for an explanation, the attorney “cited a reason unrelated to the submission deadline for the December 2024 Q&V data,” it said.
It wasn’t until “early August” that Xiamen Dalle learned it had potentially missed a deadline, it said. And “Xiamen Dalle did not receive an acknowledgement that December 2024 Q&V data was not submitted in the CVD investigation until August 28, 2025,” it said.
It asked for a remand of the CVD determination.
“Evidence discovered recently, i.e. long after the publication of Commerce’s Final Determination, indicates that Xiamen Dalle was deprived of basic notice and fair and just treatment in the course of the CVD investigation, which significantly impeded its efforts to provide all information requested by Commerce,” it said.