Commerce Slashes AD Duties for Hot-Rolled Steel Flat Products After Dropping AFA

The Commerce Department slashed antidumping duties for exporter BlueScope Steel from 99.20% to 4.95% after dropping its reliance on adverse facts available, on remand at the Court of International Trade in an April 14 submission. After issuing a supplemental questionnaire to BlueScope during remand proceedings and accepting the exporter's quantity and value data, Commerce said that AFA was no longer warranted (BlueScope Steel Ltd. v. United States, CIT #19-00057).

The opinion comes in a case over the first administrative review of the AD order on hot-rolled steel flat products from Australia, covering entries in 2016-17, in which BlueScope served as mandatory respondent. During the review, it was revealed that all of BlueScope's exports -- made through its affiliate Australian Iron & Steel -- went to its U.S. affiliate, BlueScope Steel Americas, which then entered the merchandise and resold it to yet another affiliate, Steelscape, BlueScope's affiliated processor. The only sales in the U.S. to unaffiliated customers were of merchandise further processed by Steelscape.

During the review, Commerce issued Section A supplemental questionnaires to BlueScope and its affiliates on their U.S. home market and third-country market sales. To show this information, BlueScope gave the agency two charts, one showing constructed export price (CEP) sales and entries of subject merchandise, and the other showing the total amount of Steelscape's sales of further processed merchandise and the total quantity of AIS'x sales of hot-rolled steel flat products in the U.S. through the affiliated transactions. These charts show an exact match between Steelscape's sales of further processed merchandise to unaffiliated customers and the quantity of CEP sales, the court said.

Nevertheless, Commerce tossed BlueScope's U.S. sales quantity and value reporting, taking issue with the form of the data submitted. The court, though, said that these were invalid grounds on which to establish AFA, sending the case back to Commerce (see 2112080060).

So, on remand, Commerce dropped its reliance on AFA after issuing the exporter a supplemental questionnaire. The agency said it was able to tie BlueScope's Q&V information to the U.S. sales database and changes made to the home market sales database to its narrative responses. "Given there is no gap in the administrative record, we find it inappropriate to base BlueScope’s final dumping margin on facts available, and have recalculated the company’s individual dumping margin," leading to the 4.95% margin.