Commerce Drops Reliance on AFA for Hyundai in Antidumping Review Case

The Commerce Department ditched its reliance on adverse facts available for respondent Hyundai Steel in remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade in a challenge to an antidumping review on cold-rolled steel flat products from South Korea. After giving Hyundai an opportunity to explain a discrepancy between two product codes, the agency accepted the explanation and thus dropped its adverse facts available finding. Commerce also rescinded its decision to apply the all-others rate to one of Hyundai's affiliated freight companies, dubbed "Company A" (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 19-00099).

During the administrative review, Commerce had asked for product codes and specification data -- the type or grade of steel -- despite not using either number to construct matching control numbers, which are then used to calculate Hyundai's dumping margin. Finding Hyundai's submitted data insufficient, Commerce issued follow-up questionnaires, but did not specifically alert Hyundai to what information it found lacking. It was this lack of notice that prompted the court to remand the case in April (see 2105070029).

Judge Richard Eaton directed Commerce to describe the nature of each deficiency in Hyundai's submissions and then give the company a chance to fix it. Hyundai said that one field under dispute was reported for merchandise as sold while the other was for merchandise as imported. Accepting this explanation, Commerce dropped its reliance on AFA.

With respect to the conundrum over Company A, the antidumping petitioner U.S. Steel originally requested that Commerce review the freight company. Then finding that Company A was not a producer or exporter of the subject merchandise, U.S. Steel submitted a request to withdraw the freight company from the review, but it was rejected as untimely. Nevertheless, Eaton was still convinced by the merits of U.S. Steel's arguments and instructed Commerce to reverse its application of the all-others rate to Company A, which it did on remand.