Foreign producers and importers often have a challenging, uphill battle when defending against a dumping petition. The statutory framework for evaluating whether foreign producers are selling below fair value in the United States leaves significant discretion to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission and foreign producers often find themselves on the losing end of a court’s analysis under Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., when the court rules that the agency has reasonably interpreted a governing statute. This did not occur, however, in the recent case of Dorbest Limited v. United States, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the Department of Commerce’s (“Commerce”) regulation for computing labor rates to calculate a dumping margin for a Chinese product defied Congress’ mandate set out in the governing statute.
Global Trade and Customs Journal