Reposted from Steel Business Briefing
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US Court Remands DOC Determination On Steel Grating
July 19, 2012 | Steel Business Briefing
The US Court of International Trade (CIT) has remanded a US Department of Commerce (DOC) determination related to the dumping margin on steel grating imports from China.
The plaintiff in the case is China’s Yantai Xinke Steel Structure Co. Plaintiff-intervenors are Ningbo Jiulong Machinery Co and Ningbo Haitian International Co.
As a result of its investigation, the DOC initiated antidumping duties on steel grating imports from China on July 23, 2010. Yantai’s and Ningbo Haitian imports were given a rate of 136.76%, while Ningbo Jiulong was assigned the highest rate of 145.18%. Jiulong was the sole mandatory respondent and the department found it failed to cooperate to the best of its ability.
The period of investigation was from October 1, 2008 through March 31, 2009.
The plaintiff and plaintiff-intervenors challenged the DOC’s decision to assign the separate rate respondents a margin based on the simple average of the petition rates. They also challenged the DOC decision to apply adverse facts available (AFA) to Jiulong.
The CIT ruled that the DOC’s determination to “assign the average petition rate to the separate rate respondents, without considering surrogate data placed on the record during the course of the investigation, was unreasonable. In addition, although the use of AFA in determining the value of Jiulong’s steel inputs was lawful and supported by substantial evidence, the department’s decision to disregard other information on the record, including the company’s separate-rate questionnaires, was unsupported by substantial evidence.”
Commerce was ordered to issue a redetermination by November 19, 2012.
Those who complain that the US government “always” loses when trade decisions are litigated should ponder the facts of this case. There is no reason why DOC could not have taken a more reasonable approach and still come up with a very large antidumping margin. Aggressive use of adverse facts available is shows lots of muscle but little brains. No importer can afford to bring in goods with a 100 percent or even a 50 percent duty. Other antidumping authorities manage to produce effective results without being sued all the time. DOC would do well to emulate them and lose some of the swag that just gets them — and the injured industries that bring legitimate cases to them — into so much needless needless trouble and costly litigation.