Exporter Challenges Use of AD Respondent's BPI to Value Another's CV Profit

South Korean exporter Husteel Co. challenged the Commerce Department's decision to use one antidumping duty mandatory respondent's third-country sales to calculate another mandatory respondent's constructed value profit, selling expenses and constructed export price profit. Filing its complaint on May 16 at the Court of International Trade, Husteel, a non-examined company in the relevant AD review, also argued that Commerce violated the law in its application of neutral facts available over the calculation of one of the respondent's U.S. affiliate's yield loss on further manufacturing operations (Husteel Co., Ltd. v. United States, CIT #22-00143).

The cases concern the 2019-2020 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on oil country tubular goods from South Korea in which Hyundai Steel and SeAH Steel Corp. were tapped as mandatory respondents. In the review, Commerce said that since there was no viable comparison market for Hyundai Steel, it could use "any reasonable method" to find the respondent's CV profit, selling expenses and CEP profit. The agency ended up using SeAH's third-country sales to Kuwait to do so.

Husteel then took the issue to CIT to contest this position, joining Hyundai in the process, which filed its case last week (see 2205100033). Husteel, like Hyundai, argued that the use of SeAH's business proprietary information on the other mandatory respondent is illegal. Hyundai told the trade court that it had no means to review this information so the accuracy of the data cannot be verified.

Husteel also argued against Commerce's move to increase the numerator and decrease the denominator of the general and administrative expense ratio of Hyundai's U.S. affiliate to account for the cost of goods sold of rejected pipes that the affiliate sold to unaffiliated U.S. customers. The exporter further challenged Commerce's decision to use neutral facts available over the calculation of Hyundai's affiliate's yield loss on furthering manufacturing operations.

After the review, Husteel was assigned an 11.7% dumping margin that was calculated via an average of SeAH's and Hyundai's rates. "Husteel challenges these and all other aspects of Commerce’s determination and resulting calculation adjustments for Hyundai Steel as these issues directly impacted the final antidumping duty rate applicable to Husteel," the complaint said.