CIT Stays 6 Ball Bearings AD Cases Pending Results of Union Steel Zeroing Appeal

The Court of International Trade granted stays in six proceedings pending resolution of the appeal in the Union Steel v. U.S. case regarding zeroing in administrative reviews. The six proceedings challenge the International Trade Administration’s use of zeroing in the 2004-05, 2005-06, and 2008-09 administrative reviews of the antidumping duty order on ball bearings and parts thereof from France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and the U.K. CIT said the AD administrative reviews concern different antidumping duty orders and administrative reviews than are involved in the Union Steel case, but both cases raise the same general issue of the permissibility under current law of the ITA’s application of the zeroing methodology in an administrative review.

(On February 27, following recent appeals court decisions that asked the ITA to explain its continued practice of zeroing (excluding the negative dumping margins of non-dumped imports from overall dumping margin) in administrative reviews after having ended it in investigations, the Court of International Trade accepted a partly new set of justifications from the ITA. The ruling came on the heels of the ITA's final rule that eliminated zeroing as the normal procedure in administrative reviews, but the final rule was not retroactive and did not apply to the Union Steel case (or these six cases currently before CIT).

In CIT’s Union Steel ruling, it agreed with the ITA’s argument that administrative reviews differ sufficiently in method and purpose from investigations to justify different practices in each: reviews use more precise price calculations than investigations, use month-specific average home market prices and transaction-specific U.S. sales prices, and generate specific monetary assessments, whereas investigations, the court noted, have “looser standards,” use average-to-average prices, and are intended merely to evaluate a party’s “overall selling behavior.”)

CIT granted stays in the following six proceedings:

(See ITT’s Online Archives 12030543 for summary of CIT’s ruling in Union Steel v. U.S., and 11071237 for summary of the appeals court’s JTEKT ruling, which, citing to its earlier Dongbu v. U.S. ruling, required an explanation from the ITA of its continued use of zeroing in reviews.

See ITT’s Online Archives 12021329 for summary of the ITA’s final rule eliminating zeroing as default procedure for all administrative reviews with preliminary results issued after April 16, 2012.)

(ITA Case Nos. A-427-801 (France), A-428-801 (Germany), A-475-801 (Italy), A-588-804 (Japan), A-559-801 (Singapore), and A-412-801 (UK))