Japanese Steel Exporter Takes Aim at Antidumping Review in CIT Complaint

Nippon Steel Corporation (NSC) challenges certain elements of the Commerce Department's third administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain hot-rolled steel flat products from Japan covering entries in 2018-19, in an Oct. 6 complaint at the Court of International Trade.

Commerce kicked off the review shortly after the president had imposed the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs in 2018, and picked NSC and Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co. as the two mandatory respondents. Commerce decided to treat affiliated companies NSC, Nippon Steel Nisshin Co. and Nippon Steel Trading Co. as a single entity.

The agency then decided to apply partial adverse facts available to NSC, finding that the company failed to cooperate to the best of its ability since it had the ability to cease selling to or doing business with an affiliate that declines to give Commerce necessary information requested by Commerce. As a result, the agency applied the highest unaffiliated home market price of the commonly sold control numbers to the unreported downstream sales at issue.

NSC said that Commerce improperly deducted Section 232 duties from the company's U.S. price. It also disagrees with the AFA label since the respondent cooperated by acting to the best of its ability, NSC said. The respondent also argued that "the Department ignored record evidence that certain affiliated home market resellers did not sell NSC’s hot-rolled steel in Japan during the [period of review (POR)]," and that "the Department failed to support its finding that NSC has the power to compel its affiliated home market resellers to report their downstream sales." Also, neutral facts available would have been more appropriate, the complaint said.

Finally, NSC said Commerce's alleged failure to include the U.S. revenue for extra services in the calculation of the net U.S. price ran contrary to law. Commerce acknowledged that the U.S. revenue for extra services should be included in the U.S. net price calculation and committed to doing so by using the values NSC reported in the total revenue field, the complaint said. "However, the Department did not in fact use the values NSC reported in the total revenue field to calculate constructed export price (CEP). Rather, just as in the Preliminary Results, the Department used only the gross unit price and the transportation-related revenue fields (and thus did not use the individually reported extra service revenue fields) in the calculation of CEP."