Commerce Drops PMS Position in South Korean AD Review, Declares Cohen's 'd' Position Moot

The Commerce Department dropped its finding that a particular market situation existed for the sale of oil country tubular goods in South Korea, lowering the dumping rate for respondent SeAH Steel Corp. from 3.96% to zero percent. Submitting this change to the Court of International Trade via Jan. 24 remand results, Commerce said that although it disagrees with the court that its PMS position isn't backed by enough evidence, it's making the change to comply with court orders (SeAH Steel Corp. v. United States, CIT #20-00150).

As a result of this change, Commerce said that it didn't need to reconsider the second element of the decision remanded back to the agency: the Cohen's d test. The subject of a recent ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the Cohen's d test is used as part of the agency's differential pricing analysis to identify "masked" dumping. Since it dropped the PMS position from the cost of production calculation, Commerce said that the weighted average dumping margins using the average-to-average method are zero or de minimis, rendering the issue moot.

The case concerns the 2017-18 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on OCTG from South Korea. In the review, Commerce laid out five factors that it said created a PMS for the subject goods in South Korea, including the use of hot-rolled coil, a key OCTG input, as well as subsidization by the South Korean government and Chinese overcapacity. The court, in an October 2021 decision, said that there wasn't enough evidence to support this position (see 2110190075).

"We respectfully disagree with the Court’s finding that the record evidence is insufficient to warrant an affirmative PMS determination in this administrative review," Commerce said in the remand results. "However, we have complied with the Court’s ruling and reversed our finding of a PMS for SeAH to render it consistent with the Court’s opinion."