Foreign companies involved in anti-dumping investigations face a variety of potential staffing problems. First, companies involved in an investigation involving both price and cost have to anticipate the need to defend two verifications. The Commerce Department often sends two teams to a company to conduct simultaneous verifications of the price response and the cost response. If the foreign company has used the same staff people to prepare both responses (which is quite common since the price response and cost response are usually due at different times during the investigation), there is often a scheduling conflict. The same person may be needed simultaneously in both the price and cost verifications.

Such conflicts can usually be resolved, but they require some advance planning. Sometimes the Commerce Department agrees to schedule sequential verifications - the price verification is held first, and then the cost verification. Other times the Commerce Department agrees to rearrange the order of verification topics so that the necessary company officials can be present at both verifications.

Second, companies need to anticipate a splitting of the Commerce Department team. An increasingly common Commerce Department practice is to divide the two- or three-person verification team into two or three independent points of verification. Such a division makes it more difficult for the company officials and the lawyers to control the verification. The company should anticipate such a problem and have a contingency plan in place: which company officials can meet with the Commerce Department staff alone, without the assistance of the lawyers; and more important, what topics can be treated separately and with little risk? Answering these questions in advance, in consultation with the lawyers, helps prevent major problems from developing at the verification.

Third, companies should make arrangements to free key staff members from their other responsibilities during the verification. Too often companies require key staff to assist in the verification and continue to perform their other jobs at the same time. Such an arrangement almost always leads to a less effective performance at the verification.

A fourth staffing problem relates to the number of clerical workers necessary for a verification. It is important that the company assign enough clerical staff to finish all of the work that is necessary during a verification. An enormous amount of copying takes place during the verification.

Numerous calculations are also necessary - for example, totalling all of the invoices for inland freight charges during a particular month to prove that the total matches the figures reported in the company's accounting records. It is a waste of resources to have the outside lawyers or the company's professional staff performing these clerical tasks.

A final staffing problem relates to language skills. The Commerce Department staff members rarely speak the language of the foreign company that they are verifying. The Commerce Department verification team usually brings a translator, but there are limits to what this single translator can do during the verification. It is therefore vital for most of the important verification documents to be translated prior to the beginning of the verification. Some companies can prepare adequate translations using company staff. Other companies prefer to use outside translators to prepare more official translations. Beyond these translations prepared in advance, the company should be ready to prepare additional translations, on very short notice, of other documents that become relevant during the verification.

Source: Business Guide to Trade Remedies in the United States: Anti-dumping, countervailing and safeguards legislation practices and procedures