CIT Sustains Peak Honey's High AD Rate for Missed Deadline

The Court of International Trade on March 21 rejected Dongtai Peak Honey’s challenge to its antidumping duty rate from the 2010-11 administrative review on honey from China (A-570-864). Peak Honey had been assigned the $2.63 per kilogram AD rate for the “China-wide entity” exporters who didn’t demonstrate independence from state control. Commerce had put Peak Honey in the China-wide entity because the company filed its response to an agency questionnaire on the company’s ownership structure after the applicable deadline, and only requested an extension two days after the deadline had passed. Consequently, Commerce had disregarded the questionnaire response as improperly filed. Peak Honey argued to the court that accuracy would be best served by accepting the questionnaire response even though it was late. But CIT said accuracy must be balanced with the burden on the agency of accepting a late response. In this case, Peak Honey’s submission was long and contained lots of new information, and Commerce was justified in rejecting it, said the court.