How to lodge a submission in response to an anti-dumping or countervailing case

The submission process for a safeguard inquiry will depend on the circumstances of the inquiry. Find out how the safeguard inquiry process works.

Inviting submissions

When the Australian Trade Remedies Commission opens a case, we publish a trade remedies notice (TRN) on our website. Each TRN invites interested parties to lodge a submission.

Interested parties are those who have an interest in a case and want to make a comment or argument on the public record. Interested parties include:

• businesses
• trade organisations
• governments. 

We create an electronic public record (EPR) for each case. All information and documents related to a case are published on the EPR.

Preparing a submission

If you are an interested party, you may refute, support, expand upon or reply to matters raised by other parties during the case, or in response to a commission report.

You should reference other submissions, or other information on the public record, using the:

• case number
• document number
• title of the EPR
• page number.

We recommend you provide evidence to support your views or assertions.

Your submission should use headings and subheadings for clarity and all pages should be numbered.

Lodging a submission

• You need to lodge your submission in writing. The preferred method is to email the address in the relevant TRN.
• If submitted on behalf of a company or organisation, your submission should be on company letterhead, or on the letterhead of your consultant or agent.
• The first page of your submission should include:
  • case number, goods and countries involved
  • full name and contact details of the person and organisation making the submission
  • role of the party making the submission (for example, Australian producer, importer, exporter, and so on)
  • if submitted by a consultant or agent, the full name, contact details and role of the person and organisation lodging the submission, as well as the name, client details and role of the third party/client.
• You must clearly identify who you are and who you represent in your submission.
• If you do not provide enough identifying information, we may be unable to determine whether you are an interested party. This may affect our ability to assess relevance, support confidentiality claims, or place weight on the information you provide.
• If you claim confidentiality, you must also provide a non‑confidential summary for publication so other interested parties have an opportunity to respond.

Non-confidential information

Any information provided must be available in both ‘OFFICIAL: Sensitive’ (i.e. confidential) and ‘Non-confidential’ (for public record) versions.

If your submission includes information that is confidential, or you feel the publication of this information would adversely affect your business or commercial interests, you must either:

• provide a summary of the information containing enough detail to allow sufficient understanding of the information without breaching confidentiality
• satisfy the commissioner that there is no way you can provide a summary that would provide sufficient understanding of the information.

All of our cases are conducted in a transparent manner to allow all interested parties to present their views. We won’t consider a submission where you haven’t provided a non-confidential summary or a statement of reasons why a non-confidential summary cannot be provided.

If necessary, sections of text that are confidential can be redacted for the EPR. It is your responsibility to ensure that the non-confidential version of the submission is correctly redacted (do not merely change the font to white or black out text with comment tools).

Details of any deleted or redacted text should appear in a bracketed summary following the redacted text.

For example: 

• Management accounts (e.g. income statements) can be extracted for individual operating segments, global business units, value centres etc. Accounts can be [redacted text] [Explanation of cost allocation].

If information is marked as non-confidential, the commission will not be held responsible for the disclosure of this information.

Deadlines for submissions

You must lodge your submission by the date indicated on the relevant TRN or report. 

In exceptional circumstances, we may grant extensions of time for making submissions. You must submit a request for an extension in writing before the deadline. We will publish a copy of the request for an extension on the EPR. If a request for an extension includes confidential information, you must submit a non-confidential version at the same time. Please contact the case manager as soon as possible if you are planning to seek an extension.

The amount of time you have to lodge your submission depends on the type of case.

Investigations, continuations and review of measures

There are two time periods for interested parties to make a submission:
•    up to 37 days from publication of an TRN advising the initiation of a case
•    up to 20 days from publication of the statement of essential facts.

Accelerated reviews and exemptions

The TRN announcing the accelerated review or exemption inquiry will include a closing date for submissions. Your submission needs to be received by that published date.