ICC Industries, Inc. v. U.S.

Decision Date11 February 1987
Docket NumberNo. 86-1201,86-1201
Parties5 Fed. Cir. (T) 78 ICC INDUSTRIES, INC., ICD Group, Inc., Appellants, v. The UNITED STATES, Appellee. Appeal
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit

Steven P. Kersner, Brownstein, Zeidman & Schomer, of Washington, D.C., argued for appellants.

J. Kevin Horgan, Commercial Litigation Branch, Dept. of Justice, of Washington, D.C. and Carol McCue Veratti, Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Intern. Trade Com'n, of Washington, D.C., argued for appellee. Also on the brief were Richard K. Willard, Asst. Atty. Gen. and David M. Cohen, Director, Commercial Litigation Branch, Dept. of Justice, of Washington, D.C.

Before RICH, BISSELL and ARCHER, Circuit Judges.

BISSELL, Circuit Judge.

The substantive issues in this case, here on appeal from the judgment of the United States Court of International Trade, 1 are whether:

(1) an importer knew or should have known that it was importing potassium permanganate into the United States from the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) at less than fair value, and

(2) a separate injury determination with regard to massive imports during the critical circumstances period must be made by the International Trade Commission (Commission) under 19 U.S.C. Sec. 1673d(b)(4)(A) in order to impose the duty imposed retroactively.

The trial court affirmed the final determination of the International Trade Administration of the Department of Commerce (ITA) that the importers knew or should have known that potassium permanganate was being imported into the United States from the PRC at less than fair value and that the circumstances justified the retroactive imposition of the antidumping duties, i.e., a separate injury determination with regard to massive imports during the critical circumstances period need not be made by the Commission. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

An antidumping investigation was initiated by both the ITA and the Commission in response to petitions filed concurrently by Carus Chemical Company (Carus) pursuant to 19 U.S.C. Sec. 1673a (1982). The petitions, as amended, alleged that potassium permanganate from the PRC was being imported into and sold in the United States at less than fair value. Carus requested that antidumping duties be imposed on this imported commodity and that critical circumstances be found. A final determination of critical circumstances permits the retroactive imposition of the antidumping duties for the period of 90 days prior to the ITA's preliminary determination. 19 U.S.C. Secs. 1673b(e)(2), 1673d(a)(3) (1982). Both the ITA and the Commission made final affirmative determinations in their respective investigations. ICC Industries, Inc. (ICC) and the ICD Group (ICD) (collectively, importers) were respondents in the administrative proceedings. The course of these administrative proceedings follows:

The period investigated by the Commission in Potassium Permanganate from China included the years 1981 and 1982 and January through August 1983. For the six-month period preceding the initiation of the antidumping investigation, the monthly average for imports of potassium permanganate from the PRC was 21,000 pounds. However, beginning in April 1983 imports of potassium permanganate from the PRC increased. In April 1983, 577,621 pounds were imported; in May 1983, none was imported; in June 1983, 110,892 pounds were imported; in July 1983, 428,132 pounds were imported. The total potassium permanganate imported from the PRC during the period April-July 1983 was 1,116,645 pounds. During the same period of the preceding year, the total was 149,471 pounds.

OPINION
A

Title 19 Section 1673d(b)(4)(A) provides:

If the finding of the administering authority under subsection (a)(2) of this section is affirmative, then the final determination of the Commission shall include a finding as to whether the material injury is by reason of massive imports described in subsection (a)(3) of this section to an extent that, in order to prevent such material injury from recurring, it is necessary to impose the duty imposed by section 1673 of this title retroactively on those imports.

Subsection (a)(3) referred to in the above quoted text of the code provides that critical circumstances exist if

(A)(i) there is a history of dumping in the United States or elsewhere of the class or kind of merchandise which is the subject of the investigation, or

(ii) the person by whom, or for whose account, the merchandise was imported knew or should have known that the exporter was selling the merchandise which is the subject of the investigation at less than its fair value, and

(B) there have been massive imports of the merchandise which is the subject of the investigation over a relatively short period.

19 U.S.C. Sec. 1673d(a)(3)(A)-(B) (1982).

Consequently, in order to retroactively impose the antidumping duty the ITA must initially find that either (i), a history of dumping exists or (ii), the United States importer knew or should have known that the goods were being imported at less than fair value and (iii) massive imports of the merchandise. The importers challenged the ITA's critical circumstances determination by arguing that condition (ii) could not exist. The importers argue that (1) they could not know that the goods were being imported for LTFV because it was impossible to anticipate the ITA's basis for determining fair value, (2) the substantial evidence does not support the existence of condition (ii), and (3) this is contrary to all prior ITA determinations relating to the existence of critical circumstances when the merchandise in question is from a country with a state-controlled economy. 2

B

We address first whether the importers knew or should have known of the dumping. The antidumping statutes impose a duty when a foreign producer prices the exported merchandise at LTFV and sales of that merchandise cause or threaten to cause material injury to a domestic industry. See 19 U.S.C. Secs. 1673, 1677b (1982). Fair value is intended to be an estimate of foreign market value. 19 C.F.R. Sec. 353.1 (1983). Fair value can be based on several different factors. See 19 C.F.R. Secs. 353.3-.9 (1983). "[D]umping is generally defined to exist when the foreign market value is higher than the purchase price in the United States." S.Rep. No. 1298, 93d Cong. 2d Sess., reprinted in 1974 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 7186, 7309. We find unpersuasive the importers' argument that because the merchandise was imported from a non-market economy (NME) country they could never know that the merchandise is being imported below fair value. The antidumping laws were amended to deal with exports from NME countries. See 19 U.S.C. Sec. 164(c) (1976) (repealed 1976) (current version at 19 U.S.C. Sec. 1677b (1982)); see generally Georgetown Steel Corp. v. United States, 801 F.2d 1308, 1316-17 (Fed.Cir.1986) (discussion of the adoption of use of surrogate country method for determining whether imports from NME countries were being dumped).

When the ITA investigates to determine whether dumping has occurred with goods from market economy countries, and if so, to what level, it compares each price at which the merchandise entered into the United States market with the foreign producers' average home-market price. See 19 C.F.R. Sec. 353.20-.28 (1983). In order to have a common basis for this comparison, the ITA calculates the price of the merchandise at the factory door of the foreign producer and converts the home market price into United States dollars. 19 U.S.C. Secs. 1677a (c), (d), 1677b(a)(1) (1982); 19 C.F.R. Secs. 353.3, 353.9 (1983); see Smith-Corona Group v. United States, 713 F.2d 1568, 1571-73, 1 Fed.Cir. (T) 130, 132-33 (1983). The level of dumping is determined on the basis of the excess of the foreign market value of the merchandise in the country of production over the selling price for the merchandise in the United States. 19 U.S.C. Sec. 1673 (1982); Consumer Products Div., SCM Corp. v. Silver Reed America, Inc., 753 F.2d 1033, 3 Fed.Cir. (T) 83 (1985).

When this analysis is applied to goods from NME countries, there is no home market price to which the United States price can be compared. Home market prices and costs are meaningless as a source of "fair value" in NME countries in view of the level of intervention by the government in setting relative prices. See Horlick & Shuman, Nonmarket Economy Trade and U.S. Antidumping/Countervailing Duty Laws, 18 Int'l Law. 807, 818 (1984) [hereinafter, Horlick & Shuman]. Consequently, the statute requires the ITA to identify "surrogate" producers 3 in market economy countries and to compare the prices of the NME country's imports to the prices charged by the surrogate. 19 U.S.C. Sec. 1677b(c)(1) (1982). While the surrogate country method of determining whether dumping exists has received criticism, Congress did not adopt this method blindly. By enacting this subsection, Congress adopted the then existing Treasury regulations. See S.Rep. No. 1298, 93d Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1974 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 7186, 7311; Ehrenhaft, The Treasury's Proposed Approach to Imports From State-Controlled Economy Countries and State-Owned Enterprises Under the Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Laws, reprinted in Interface One: Conference Proceedings on the Application of U.S. Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Laws to Imports From State-Controlled Economies and State-Owned Enterprises 75, 80-85 (D. Wallace, G. Spina, R. Rawson & B. McGill, eds. 1980); Horlick & Shuman, supra, at 810.

While the uncertainty of not knowing which country will be chosen by the ITA as the surrogate country is seemingly unfair to an importer of goods from NME countries, this is but one criticism of the statute and is not enough to exempt the importers from the reach of the statute.

Consequently, the question becomes whether the evidence in the administrative record could have reasonably led to the ITA's conclusion...

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