Hyundai Defends Its Position in AD Review Following Attack Over Its 'Shifting Narratives'

Hyundai Steel Co. attempted to explain away an attack from antidumping petitioner U.S. Steel that it has a "troubling history" on a key issue in the AD review, in a Nov. 8 brief submitted to the Court of International Trade. Asserting that its prior positions are irrelevant to the issue at hand, Hyundai characterized U.S. Steel's attacks as "without merit," arguing instead that its "perceived deficiency" in certain data fields can be easily explained to Commerce (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 19-00099).

The case arose from the first administrative review on an antidumping duty order on cold-rolled steel flat products from South Korea in which Hyundai was a mandatory respondent. During the investigation, Commerce 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 the 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 (see 2109280041).

U.S. Steel then contested Commerce's decision to simply accept this explanation from Hyundai in its comments on the remand results (see 2111020039). The petitioner said that the remand did not stop Commerce from finding that Hyundai did not cooperate to the best of its ability or being "indifferent to Hyundai's chronic failures" to do just that, especially when the key issue that brought Commerce to apply AFA is still unresolved. Commerce should also be concerned with the fact that Hyundai is "miscoding its sales," U.S. Steel argued.

In its response, Hyundai explained, "for certain sales the difference between the 'as sold' and 'as produced' specifications occurred because the sales were of formed parts, a further-manufactured part, which do not have a product specification as part of the product’s product code," the brief said. "... The remaining differences occurred because of substitutions of one specification for another, with the customer’s consent, in order to meet a customer’s urgent needs."

U.S. Steel's claims on the other hand, are mere conjecture that have no relation to the standard of review or the facts of the case, Hyundai argued. "Simply put, U.S. Steel provides no viable challenge to Commerce’s determination," the respondent said. "Its unsupported allegations are not only factually deficient but, more importantly, fail to raise any legally cognizable arguments for the Court to consider at this juncture." Also, Commerce had already considered U.S. Steel's arguments that Hyundai failed to cooperate to the best of its ability and found the claim "unpersuasive."

"Hyundai Steel takes its obligation to provide Commerce with accurate and documented information seriously, and puts forth its maximum efforts to do so. In this proceeding, for example, as soon as Commerce identified a perceived issue in Hyundai Steel’s reporting for the first time in the Preliminary Results, Hyundai Steel requested an opportunity to provide Commerce with whatever information the agency needed to clarify the issue," the brief said.

The Department of Justice further backed Hyundai in its own comments on the remand results. DOJ said that Hyundai cooperated to the best of its ability by responding to all of the questions on the supplemental questionnaire and complied with the court's order. The government also addressed U.S. Steel's concerns over "miscoding," finding that, while the discrepancies still exist, "Hyundai has provided sufficient explanation allowing Commerce to understand why it reported each field on a different basis."