Arent Fox partner John Gurley was quoted in Law360 commenting on a US Court of International Trade finding that the Commerce Department wrongfully inflated a Chinese bearing manufacturer's dumping margin by considering inappropriate import data.

In an article titled “CIT Finds US Erred In Peer Bearing Dumping Margin,” International Trade Law360 reported:

Commerce used data from India as a stand-in for China, a nonmarket economy, to determine the US import price of Peer Bearing Co.-Changshan's steel bars. Judge Timothy C. Stanceu decided on Friday that Commerce should have used import data from two other market economies — Indonesia and the Philippines — that had lower rates than India to determine Peer Bearing's dumping margin, which was calculated to be 92.84 percent. … John Gurley, an attorney for Peer Bearing, told Law360 on Monday that the judge's decision regarding Commerce's use of U.S. data would factor into future international trade cases.

“This one will now be cited repeatedly because the US Commerce Department does not like looking at U.S. data,” Gurley said. “The court said 'True, but you still could have used it to corroborate if the prices were reasonable.'”

In determining that Commerce wrongfully calculated the company's dumping margin, Judge Stanceu also cited the United States' use of pricing information between Peer Bearing and a foreign, unaffiliated importer that then sold the company's products.

Peer Bearing argued that Commerce should have used the price between the company's US affiliate and its customers, Gurley said.

Peer Bearing was represented by Arent Fox LLP attorneys John Gurley, Diana Quaia and Matthew L. Kanna. The case is Peer Bearing Co.-Changshan v. United States, case number 09-00052, in the US Court of International Trade.