In December 2014, Commerce released its new list of surrogate countries for China. Neither Indonesia nor the Philippines are on the new list, meaning that Commerce and parties in China NME cases will face increasing difficulties in finding usable surrogate countries on the official list, outside of Thailand. Perhaps reflecting these new difficulties, Commerce has begun to allow more countries not on the list to serve as surrogate countries.

In total 77.8 percent of all reviews have gone affirmative while only 22.2 percent have gone negative. With each subsequent review cycle, the percentage of cases going affirmative has increased; specifically, 75.4 percent, 78.6 percent, and 89.2 percent of reviews have gone affirmative in the first, second, and third reviews of cases respectively.

When a U.S. control number or “CONNUM” is the same as the comparison market CONNUM the USDOC determines the products to be identical. However, when the identical comparison market CONNUM was not sold, how does the USDOC’s SAS computer programming go about identifying the “most similar” comparison market match?

What appears simple on the surface is, in fact, not very simple at all. As a result, the road to understanding, let alone mastering, these calculations can be daunting.