Commerce Drops Section 232 Duties From AD Respondent's US Price on Remand at CIT

The Commerce Department found on remand that antidumping duty respondent Power Steel Co. did not pay Section 232 duties on two entries of steel concrete rebar, dropping the duties paid as part of the exporter's sales price used to establish its base export price in an antidumping duty administrative review. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on April 8, Commerce lowered Power Steel's dumping margin from 3.27% to 0.01%, locking in a finding that Power Steel did not make sales at less than normal value (Power Steel Co., Ltd. v. United States, CIT #20-03771).

The case concerns Commerce's final results in the 2017-2018 administrative review of the AD order on steel concrete rebar from Taiwan. Power Steel contested Commerce's deduction of Section 232 duties from the U.S. export price and the agency's finding that Power Steel paid Section 232 duties on all of its U.S. sales. In a December 2021 opinion, the trade court upheld Commerce's ability to deduct Section 232 duties from the export price but sided with the exporter on its second contention.

In the review, Commerce deducted Section 232 duties from the export price of all of Power Steel's entries. To counter this presumption, the respondent submitted evidence in an attempt to show that these duties were not paid on every entry and were instead paid by the U.S. customers. Such evidence included a revised sales agreement, email correspondence and accounting records. The court, though, found that Power Steel didn't argue before Commerce specifically that the sales invoices showed that it didn't pay the Section 232 duties. Nevertheless, the court remanded the issue for Commerce to consider whether the sales invoices and other evidence shows that the exporter didn't pay the Section 232 duties (see 2112230063).

So Commerce took another look and found that Power Steel did not pay the Section 232 duties on two entries, dropping them from the U.S. price for the transactions. The result was a de minimis dumping margin for the exporter.