ARCHROMA U.S., INC. v. DEPT. OF COMMERCE

Authored by: Jeremy J. Gustrowsky

The Federal Circuit reversed a Court of International Trade decision that had struck down a Department of Commerce regulation requiring domestic interested parties to file a notice of intent to participate in antidumping “sunset reviews” within 15 days of the initiation notice. The appellate court held that the regulation, 19 C.F.R. § 351.218(d)(1)(i), is a valid exercise of Commerce’s delegated rulemaking authority and does not conflict with the governing statute.

Under the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended, Commerce must review antidumping duty orders every five years to decide whether revoking them would likely lead to renewed dumping. If no interested party responds to the notice of initiation, Commerce must terminate the review and revoke the order within 90 days. To manage this timeline, Commerce adopted two regulatory deadlines: a 15-day deadline for domestic interested parties to file a notice of intent to participate, and a 30-day deadline for all interested parties to file substantive responses.

The case arose when Archroma U.S., Inc., a domestic importer of paper whitening chemicals, filed its notice of intent six days late but submitted its substantive response before the 30-day deadline. Commerce rejected both filings because Archroma missed the 15-day cutoff, and Archroma did not attempt to show good cause or extraordinary circumstances. With no other domestic interested party responding, Commerce terminated the review and revoked the antidumping duty orders on stilbenic optical brightening agents from China and Taiwan. The Trade Court sided with Archroma, holding that the 15-day rule conflicted with the statute because the statute only required a response within 90 days.

The Federal Circuit disagreed. Applying the framework from Loper Bright and its own recent en banc decision in Lesko, the court determined that 19 U.S.C. § 3513(a)(2) grants Commerce broad authority to issue regulations “necessary to ensure” the statute is appropriately implemented. Since the statute is silent on when interested parties must indicate their intent to participate, Commerce had authority to “fill up the details” by setting a reasonable interim deadline. The court noted that it had previously approved similar Commerce-set deadlines where the statute was silent.

The court also found the 15-day requirement to be the product of reasoned decisionmaking. The rule serves the legitimate purposes of eliminating needless reviews and promoting administrative efficiency, sparing foreign producers and importers from preparing substantive responses when no domestic party intends to participate. The burden on domestic parties is minimal, requiring only basic identifying information, and the regulation allows extensions for good cause and acceptance of late filings for extraordinary circumstances.

The court rejected Archroma’s argument that the “whole-text canon” required reading the statute to allow participation whenever a party met the 30-day substantive response deadline. Nothing in the Tariff Act grants domestic interested parties an unqualified right to participate in sunset reviews. The court also noted the inconsistency in Archroma’s position, since Archroma conceded that Commerce could validly require full substantive responses within 15 days, yet challenged the less burdensome intent-to-participate deadline. The judgment was reversed and remanded for entry of judgment in favor of Commerce, the International Trade Commission, and intervenor Teh Fong Min International.