An administrative review of AD/CVD duties is the Department of Commerce proceeding that recalculates the actual antidumping and countervailing duties owed on a specific twelve months of U.S. imports covered by a duty order. When goods subject to an order enter the country, the importer pays a cash deposit at a rate set in an earlier proceeding. That deposit is a placeholder. The review examines real sales prices, production costs, and subsidy data from the period under review and produces a final rate. The difference between the deposit and the final rate becomes either a refund or an additional duty bill, with interest running from the date of the original deposit.
Who Can Request a Review and When
The request window opens once a year, during the anniversary month of the original duty order’s publication in the Federal Register. Commerce publishes a notice listing all orders with upcoming anniversaries and sets a deadline, typically the last day of that month. Miss it and there is no second chance for that year’s entries.1eCFR. 19 CFR 351.213 – Administrative Review of Orders and Suspension Agreements Under Section 751(a)(1) of the Act
Three categories of parties have standing. A domestic interested party, such as a U.S. manufacturer or trade association, can ask Commerce to review specified foreign exporters or producers and must explain why it wants those particular companies examined. A foreign exporter or producer covered by the order can request a review of itself. A U.S. importer can request a review of any exporter or producer whose merchandise it imported during the relevant period.1eCFR. 19 CFR 351.213 – Administrative Review of Orders and Suspension Agreements Under Section 751(a)(1) of the Act
The written request must name specific exporters or producers. If nobody names a particular company, that company keeps paying the existing cash deposit rate and receives no recalculation. Once the window closes, Commerce initiates the proceeding by publishing a notice in the Federal Register listing every company under review.
What Happens If No Review Is Requestedh2>
If the anniversary month passes with no request for a given order, Commerce instructs Customs and Border Protection to liquidate entries at the cash deposit rate that was in effect when the goods entered. That same deposit rate stays in place for future shipments. The status quo continues: no refund, no additional bill, no updated rate.2Federal Register. Antidumping or Countervailing Duty Order, Finding, or Suspended Investigation; Opportunity To Request Administrative Review
This is where importers sometimes miscalculate. If the true dumping margin has fallen below the deposit rate, silence leaves money on the table indefinitely. Domestic producers who suspect increased dumping have the opposite incentive: request a review that might push the rate higher.
Withdrawing a Request
A party that files a request can change its mind, but only within 90 days of Commerce’s notice initiating the review. Commerce has discretion to extend that deadline when circumstances warrant. If every party that requested the review withdraws inside the window, Commerce rescinds the review and publishes a rescission notice.1eCFR. 19 CFR 351.213 – Administrative Review of Orders and Suspension Agreements Under Section 751(a)(1) of the Act
Commerce can also rescind on its own if it determines there were no entries, exports, or sales of the subject merchandise during the review period. Partial rescission is available when only some named companies had no shipments.
Selection as a Mandatory Respondent
When many exporters or producers are named, Commerce usually cannot examine each one individually. It selects a limited number of mandatory respondents, typically the companies with the largest volume of U.S. imports during the period, ranked using Customs entry data.3eCFR. 19 CFR 351.109 – Selection of Examined Respondents
Companies not selected as mandatory respondents may still participate as voluntary respondents, and Commerce may accept their questionnaire responses if resources allow. Those that neither receive a mandatory examination nor volunteer generally receive a rate based on the weighted average of the mandatory respondents’ individually calculated margins. Selection matters: an examined company can demonstrate a lower rate through its own data, while a non-examined company depends on someone else’s numbers.
The Questionnaire
Once a review is initiated, Commerce issues detailed questionnaires to selected respondents. Filings move through the Enforcement and Compliance Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Centralized Electronic Service System, known as ACCESS.4eCFR. 19 CFR Part 351 – Antidumping and Countervailing Duties
The questionnaire is divided into sections covering corporate structure and accounting (Section A), home-market sales used to establish normal value (Section B), every U.S. sales transaction including discounts, rebates, and shipping (Section C), and cost of production data when Commerce suspects below-cost sales (Section D). Countervailing duty reviews add questions about government-provided benefits, including grants, preferential tax treatment, below-market loans, and equity infusions, each of which must be documented with bank statements and government correspondence.
The burden falls on the respondent to submit data that reconciles cleanly with its audited financial statements. Every figure must trace back to verifiable records. Companies that treat the questionnaire as a formality tend to run into trouble at verification, when Commerce officials visit offices to inspect original invoices, shipping records, bank statements, and production logs against the reported responses.
Protecting Confidential Business Information
Much of the data is commercially sensitive: pricing, cost structures, customer lists, supplier terms. Commerce handles this through Administrative Protective Orders (APOs), which allow authorized representatives of other parties, typically opposing counsel, to view confidential submissions while barring them from sharing the information with their clients or using it commercially.5eCFR. 19 CFR 351.103 – Central Records Unit and Administrative Protective Order and Dockets Unit Respondents must file both a confidential version and a redacted public version of every submission. APO violations can result in sanctions, including being barred from future proceedings.
The Timeline
The schedule is statutory and anchored to the anniversary month. Commerce must issue preliminary results within 245 days after the last day of that anniversary month. If the case is too complex, the preliminary deadline can be extended to 365 days.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 USC 1675 – Administrative Review of Determinations
After preliminary results publish, interested parties have 30 days to submit case briefs arguing calculation or methodology errors. Rebuttal briefs are due five days after the case brief deadline.7eCFR. 19 CFR 351.309 – Written Argument on Certain Actions On request, Commerce may hold a public hearing for oral argument. The briefs and hearing form the administrative record on which the final decision rests.
Final results must publish within 120 days of the preliminary results. Commerce can extend to 180 days, or alternatively issue final results up to 300 days after the preliminary determination without having extended the preliminary deadline.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 USC 1675 – Administrative Review of Determinations Extensions are common. A straightforward review might close within a year of initiation; a complex case with multiple respondents routinely runs 18 months or longer.
Adverse Facts Available: The Cost of Not Cooperating
If a respondent fails to cooperate by not acting to the best of its ability to comply with Commerce’s information requests, the agency can apply adverse facts available (AFA). This is the penalty for stonewalling, submitting unreliable data, or missing deadlines, and it can be severe. Commerce can assign the highest dumping margin or subsidy rate from any segment of the proceeding.8eCFR. 19 CFR 351.308 – Determinations on the Basis of the Facts Available
Commerce is not required to estimate what the margin would have been had the company cooperated, and does not need to show that the AFA rate reflects the company’s actual commercial situation. The rate is deliberately punitive. AFA rates regularly land in triple digits. A company paying a 5% cash deposit can find itself facing a 200% or higher rate simply because it failed to respond adequately to a questionnaire. The petition rate from the original investigation often becomes the AFA rate.
Liquidation, Refunds, and Bills
Once Commerce publishes final results, CBP liquidates the entries covered by the review. Liquidation is the final calculation of duties owed on each shipment.9eCFR. 19 CFR Part 159 – Liquidation of Duties
If the final rate is lower than the cash deposit paid at entry, CBP refunds the difference plus interest. If the final rate is higher, CBP sends a supplemental duty bill for the shortfall, also with interest. Interest accrues from the date the importer originally deposited the estimated duties through the date of liquidation, at rates set quarterly based on the federal short-term rate.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 USC 1505 – Payment of Duties and Fees For the first quarter of 2026, the underpayment rate is 7%, and the overpayment rate is 7% for non-corporate importers and 6% for corporations.11Federal Register. Quarterly IRS Interest Rates Used in Calculating Interest on Overdue Accounts and Refunds of Customs Duties
A supplemental bill unpaid 30 days after liquidation is considered delinquent and begins accruing additional interest in 30-day increments until paid in full.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 USC 1505 – Payment of Duties and Fees
The final results also set the new cash deposit rate for future imports of the subject merchandise. That rate stays in effect until the next completed review produces a different one or the order is revoked. The cycle then resets with a new anniversary month.
Appealing the Final Results
A party that disagrees with Commerce’s final determination can challenge it in the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT). The deadlines are short. A summons must be filed within 30 days of publication of the final results in the Federal Register, and a complaint within 30 days after that.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 USC 1516a – Judicial Review in Countervailing Duty and Antidumping Duty Proceedings
Filing suit does not by itself stop CBP from liquidating the entries at the newly published rate. To prevent liquidation, the appealing party must obtain a preliminary injunction from the CIT ordering CBP to suspend liquidation while the case is pending. This step is critical. Once entries are liquidated, the liquidation is final and the court loses the ability to order a different duty assessment. Commerce’s internal policy of issuing liquidation instructions to CBP within 15 days of publishing final results compresses the injunction timeline severely. Missing it can effectively eliminate meaningful judicial review. The CIT decides the case on the administrative record Commerce assembled and can sustain, modify, or remand the determination.
A Separate Proceeding: The Five-Year Sunset Review
Administrative reviews recalculate rates for individual twelve-month periods; they do not decide whether the underlying order should continue. That question belongs to a separate five-year sunset review, conducted jointly by Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission, which assesses whether revoking the order would likely lead to renewed dumping or subsidization and renewed injury to the domestic industry.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 19 USC 1675 – Administrative Review of Determinations If no domestic interested party responds to the initiation notice, Commerce revokes the order within 90 days. Orders that survive continue for another five years until the next sunset review, and many AD/CVD orders have run for decades on this cycle.