Opinion ID: 208083
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Substantial Evidence Supports Commerce's Resort to Facts Available

Text: Ningbo's argument that Commerce should have relied on a single, noncolorspecific PET flake value as the best available information is unavailing. In the supporting memorandum to its Final Determination, Commerce explained: [T]here is a direct relation between the sale price of PSF and the color of PET flake price used to produce PSF (i.e., generally, white PET flake is more expensive than green PET flake, and therefore, generally, the sale price of white PSF is greater than that of green PSF).... Therefore, in order to accurately calculate dumping margins in this case, it is important to make identical or similar comparisons between the sales of a specific color of finished PSF and the normal value based on the color of PET flake used to produce the PSF. Thus, the Department requested that Ningbo Dafa report its usage ratios of PET flake based on color and its market economy purchase prices of PET flake based on color. Investigation of Certain Polyester Staple Fiber from the People's Republic of China: Issues & Decision Mem. at 61 (Dep't of Commerce Apr. 10, 2007). Thus, substantial evidence, including the color-based relationship between PET flake cost and PSF price, supports Commerce's conclusion that it required color-specific PET flake values to accurately calculate Ningbo's dumping margin. Ningbo did not provide complete color-specific PET flake information. Accordingly, Ningbo's failure to provide information in the form and manner requested by [Commerce] and failure to suggest alternative forms in which it was able to submit the requested information, id., forced Commerce to apply the facts otherwise available to determine color-specific PET flake values. Resorting to the facts availablenamely, verified invoices from Ningbo's actual market economy purchasesCommerce properly relied on incomplete color-specific and non-color-specific invoices to calculate color-specific PET flake values. In determining the valuation of the factors of production, the critical question is whether the methodology used by Commerce is based on the best available information and establishes antidumping margins as accurately as possible. Shakeproof Assembly Components v. United States, 268 F.3d 1376, 1382 (Fed. Cir.2001); Parkdale Int'l v. United States, 475 F.3d 1375, 1380 (Fed.Cir. 2007). While § 1677b(c) provides guidelines to assist Commerce in this process, this section also accords Commerce wide discretion in the valuation of factors of production in the application of those guidelines. Shakeproof, 268 F.3d at 1381 (quoting Nation Ford Chem. Co. v. United States, 166 F.3d 1373, 1377 (Fed. Cir.1999)); see Lasko Metal Prods., Inc. v. United States, 43 F.3d 1442, 1446 (Fed. Cir.1994). In the context of § 1677b(c), where a party fails to provide requested information or certain necessary information is wholly absent from the record, such that no best information exists as to a particular factor of production, Commerce can resort to the general, gap-filling facts available authority conferred by § 1677e(a). See Shandong Huarong Gen. Group Corp. v. United States, 60 Fed.Appx. 797, 799-800 (Fed.Cir.2003) (nonprecedential) (concluding that, although Commerce's determination must be based on the best available information, where a respondent did not provide sufficient information, Commerce made a reasonable determination based on the available information). Commerce may be able to identify the best information among that available to it, but requiring Commerce to do so does not ensure that the available record information includes the information Commerce needs to fulfill its responsibility to calculate antidumping margins as accurately as possible under § 1677b(c). Shakeproof, 268 F.3d at 1382. Section 1677e(a) is secondary to, but nonetheless supplements, § 1677b(c)(1). Here, no information was available as to the specific value of brown PET flake none of Ningbo's market economy invoices indicated brown, and color-specific Indian surrogate values did not exist. Thus, having permissibly determined that color-specific PET flake values were important to an accurate margin calculation, Commerce followed its longstanding policy that market economy prices are the best available information under 19 U.S.C. § 1677b(c)(1) and relied on the prices from Ningbo's market economy invoices to value PET flake. [4] Commerce resorted to partial facts available under 19 U.S.C. § 1677e(a) for the necessary information that was missing from the record, but did so in accordance with the best available information mandate of § 1677b(c)(1). See NSK Ltd. v. United States, 358 F.Supp.2d 1276, 1290 (Ct. Int'l Trade 2005) (By its nature, a `facts available' analysis necessarily implies that Commerce used facts where the actual facts are an insufficient basis for a complete analysis.).