Commerce Defends CEP Adjustment in Steel Pipe AD Review at Trade Court
The Commerce Department properly granted antidumping duty respondents a constructed export price offset in an AD review, the U.S. argued in a Dec. 5 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. While AD petitioner Wheatland Tube "is correct" in arguing that the party seeking the offset has the burden of establishing the amount and nature of a particular adjustment, Commerce in this case reasonably found that "due to prior practice in this proceeding of accepting comparable information and analyses as sufficient to grant a CEP offset that Commerce should continue to grant a CEP offset in this review" (Wheatland Tube v. United States, CIT #22-00160).
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The case concerns the 2019-2020 administrative review of the AD order on circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea in which Husteel Co. and Hyundai Steel Co. served as mandatory respondents. Commerce got information from both of the companies on the marketing stages involved in making their home market and U.S. sales, including a description of the selling activities performed for each channel of distribution. In their responses, Husteel and Hyundai requested a CEP offset, which the agency granted preliminarily.
The result was a 4.07% dumping margin for Husteel and a 1.97% margin for Hyundai Steel. The petitioner took to the trade court to argue that the respondents failed to show that price differences between levels of trade are due to selling expenses differences and that, although an adjustment was granted in the last review, Commerce said it did not believe that Husteel's analysis was sufficient for future reviews.
In response, the U.S. said that its evaluation of responses in determining whether to grant a CEP offset "has evolved during subsequent reviews of this proceeding." Previously, the agency accepted company reporting similar to that given in this review. "Although Commerce has signaled that it will be more critical and demanding of the level of quantitative analysis that it requires from respondent companies in future reviews, in this review Commerce reasonably determined that it had not given sufficient guidance as to what level of analysis it required through the issuance of supplemental questionnaires," the government said. "Accordingly, Commerce reasonably determined that denying a CEP offset in these narrow circumstances would constitute a violation 19 U.S.C. § 1677m(d)."
In a past review, Commerce did say it would require more information pertaining to a CEP offset, but the agency reasonably found that in this review it did not give enough guidance to find that the respondents should not be given an offset they had been given in past reviews, the U.S. argued.