CIT Consolidates Cases Over Use of an AD Respondent's Third-Country Sales to Value Another's CV Profit

The Court of International Trade in a June 28 order consolidated four antidumping duty cases concerning whether the Commerce Department can use one antidumping mandatory respondent's third-country sales to calculate another mandatory respondent's constructed value profit, selling expenses and constructed export price profit. The cases, brought by lead plaintiffs Hyundai Steel Co., AJU Besteel Co., Nexteel Co. and Husteel Co., all challenge the same final results in the administrative review of the antidumping duty order on oil country tubular goods from South Korea.

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. The plaintiffs took issue, arguing that Commerce could not use these sales to calculate CV profit and selling expenses since Hyundai Steel itself has no means to review the underlying data to check out the accuracy of these sales since it can't access SeAH's business proprietary information (see 2205100033). Further, the respondent said that Commerce failed to apply the mandated CV "profit cap" as required by the law -- an especially important point since SeAH's third-country profit ratio greatly outpaced other record sources -- and that SeAH's third-country sales were not representative for calculating CV profit and selling expenses for Hyundai Steel.

(Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00138) (AJU Besteel Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00139) (NEXTEEL Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00140) (Husteel Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00143).