CIT Remands ITA's 2007-08 Korea Carbon Steel Flat Products AD Review

May 30, 2012 by Brian Feito|Penalties and Courts

The Court of International Trade remanded for further redetermination the final results of the International Trade Administration’s 2007-08 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain corrosion-resistant carbon steel flat products from Korea (A-580-816). In this consolidated action, four plaintiffs, Korean exporters Union Steel Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Dongbu Steel Co., Ltd., and Hyundai HYSCO, as well as U.S. Steel, a member of the U.S. domestic industry, challenged the ITA’s final results. Additionally, the ITA requested a voluntary remand with respect to four claims.

CIT Orders ITA to Reconsider Zeroing, Use of Quarterly Costs, Etc.

Specifically, CIT remanded for redetermination the ITA’s final results with respect to the following issues:

The ITA’s decision to use financial data pertaining only to the 2008 fiscal year of Union’s parent company in determining Union’s interest expense ratio for certain purposes, and particularly its failure to address Union’s concern that the 2008 financial data was distorted by the severe depreciation of the Won in the final months of 2008, which were after of the period of review, as a result of the financial crisis.
The ITA’s use of quarterly costs when applying the recovery-of-costs test to its cost of production analysis, and its indexing and quarterly cost methodologies in all applications, including the recovery-of-cost test and below-cost test, as well as determination of constructed value and the difference-in-merchandise adjustment (DIFMER). The ITA requested a voluntary remand with respect to its use of a quarterly-cost methodology for recovery of costs purposes and the indexing methodology for the steel substrate input wherever applied, but CIT concluded that it was appropriate to order a remand so that the ITA will reconsider the indexed quarterly-cost methodology wherever it was used in the final results.
The departure by the ITA from its “90/60 day window period” for identifying the contemporaneous month for the purposes of comparing U.S. sales to monthly average comparison market prices pursuant to the average-to-transaction comparison method.
The ITA’s decision to compare laminated subject merchandise with painted, non-laminated subject merchandise. The ITA requested a voluntary remand of this determination in light of the CIT’s November 2011 ruling on this issue with respect to another administrative review of the same AD order.
The ITA’s use of zeroing methodology. The ITA requested a voluntary remand of this determination in light of several rulings by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
The date of sale used by the ITA for U.S. sales by HYSCO sold through Hyundai HYSCO USA, Inc.

CIT Rejects Dongbu’s Attempt for Individual Review, but Redetermination will Apply

CIT rejected Dongbu’s challenge of the ITA’s decision not to assign it an individually-determined dumping margin because, according to CIT, Dongbu failed to exhaust its administrative remedies when it declined to pursue voluntary respondent status.

However, CIT agreed with Dongbu’s argument that any changes to AD margins assigned to Union and HYSCO should be reflected in any assessment and deposit rate applied to Dongbu.

(Slip Op. 12-67, dated 05/25/12, Judge Stanceu)