Glycine Producer Said No Administrative Remedies Available During Scope Ruling Process
A domestic glycine producer said Sept. 3 that it hadn’t needed to exhaust its administrative remedies prior to coming to court because it had never had the chance to seek a remedy in the first place (Deer Park Glycine, LLC v. U.S., CIT # 23-00238).
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Specifically, petitioner Deer Park Glycine said, the U.S. was seeking to avoid arguments that the Commerce Department, in a scope ruling, had unlawfully restricted the scopes of antidumping and countervailing duty orders on dried crystalline glycine by its “unreasonably restrictive interpretation of the word ‘precursor.’” The department also hoped to avoid the point that an equivalent product to the merchandise considered in the ruling was covered by the orders, it said.
The importer said it takes issue with the department’s decision to define a “precursor” to dried crystalline glycinate as a good only one processing step beneath it. As a result, calcium glycinate, which undergoes “a few minor processes” to become glycine slurry, and is then transformed into dried crystalline glycine, was held by Commerce to be outside of the scope of the orders -- despite the fact that sodium glycinate, manufactured into glycine in the same way, is explicitly included in the orders, it said.
The government said in its brief that Deer Park was barred from raising that argument because it hadn’t done so during the scope ruling process. But Commerce only provided its definition of the word “precursor,” as well as its overall analysis, in its final determination, the importer said.
“At the time it submitted its scope ruling application, the Plaintiff reasonably presumed that Commerce, as the agency charged with administering the scope of the Orders, would interpret the scope language consistent with the understanding of the parties during the original investigation,” it said.
Despite this, the U.S. unreasonably argued that Deer Park should have proposed a definition for “precursor” and identified the similarities between calcium glycinate and sodium glycinate in its scope ruling application, the importer said. But it said it “was not required to predict that Commerce would make an interpretation in its scope ruling that would be so plainly erroneous.”
The information it did provide in its application, it said, had been more than enough for Commerce to make its interpretation.