SeAH's AD Rate Unaffected by CIT Case, US Says in Motion Opposing SeAH's Intervention

Exporter SeAH Steel Corp. should not be allowed to intervene in an antidumping duty case at the Court of International Trade since the court's ruling in the matter "would have no effect on its entries," the U.S. argued in a June 30 reply brief. SeAH only seeks to join the case, initially brought by Hyundai Steel Co., to potentially use the opinion as precedent in a later proceeding from a subsequent administrative review, DOJ said. This rationale does not clear the court's bar for establishing standing as an intervening party, the U.S. argued (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. #22-00138).

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 constructed value profit, selling expenses and constructed export price profit. The agency ended up using SeAH's third-country sales to Kuwait to do this.

CIT recently consolidated four cases each challenging this review, brought by lead plaintiffs Hyundai, AJU Besteel Co., Nexteel Co. and Husteel Co. (see 2206280075). In these cases, the plaintiffs argue 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. 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.

The U.S. opposes SeAH's motion to intervene in the case, telling the trade court that since the company received its own individual dumping margin for its exports, its rate would be unaffected by any decision in the present case. DOJ further argued that SeAH failed to claim a "legally protectable" interest in the transaction at issue, has no direct relationship to the litigation and failed to show that this interest is not adequately addressed.

The respondent said in its motion to intervene that it may be adversely affected not in the present case "but in other proceedings." The U.S. took issue with this language. "Putting aside that a party may not raise hypothetical claims that may occur in the future, a decision from the Court on Hyundai’s claims from this review, would have no bearing on other similar claims in subsequent reviews," the brief said.