Turkish Exporter Rails Against ITC's Failure to Review AD Injury Proceeding in Light of CIT Case

The International Trade Commission violated the law by failing to either conduct a changed circumstances review or reconsider its original antidumping neglibility decision in a sunset review, Turkish exporter Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari (Erdemir) argued in a group of three related complaints at the Court of International Trade. After another exporter, Colakoglu Dis Ticaret, was revoked from the AD order following court proceedings, the ITC illegally denied any opportunity for Colakoglu's imports to be excluded from the antidumping duty injury proceeding, Erdemir said (Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari v. U.S. International Trade Commission, CIT #22-00349, #22-00350, #22-00351).

The ITC simultaneously carried out antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on hot-rolled steel from Turkey in 2016. In the CVD investigation, the commission said that imports from Turkey were negligible after it excluded Colakoglu, the country's largest exporter, since it was subsidy-free. However, In the AD case, the Commerce Department said Colakoglu dumped its exports in the U.S. market, so the company's merchandise was included in the injury proceeding.

Colakoglu filed suit at CIT to contest its dumping margin. The trade court sided with the exporter over a methodological error committed by Commerce, resulting in a zero percent margin for Colakoglu. The company was dropped from the AD order retroactive to the agency's preliminary determination. "Had Commerce acted lawfully in its AD investigation, Commerce would have found that Çolakoğlu’s U.S. sales were not at [less than fair value], and therefore would have made a negative final determination as to Çolakoğlu, just as it did in the CVD case," the complaints said.

Erdemir requested that the ITC revisit the AD injury proceeding either via a "reconsideration proceeding," a CCR or a sunset review that was pending at the time. The commission refused to do so, resulting in the present court actions. In one case, Erdemir faults the ITC for failing to "reconsider and correct errors in the AD negligibility determination in the original investigation."

In a second case, Erdemir says that the decision not to conduct a CCR is illegal since the commission "has the authority to conduct a changed circumstances review for purposes of retroactive correction of errors in the AD negligibility determination in the original investigation, and wrongly declined to conduct a CCR to reconsider the negligibility decision of its original investigation in light of the retroactive exclusion of Çolakoğlu from the AD order."

The third court action from Erdemir contests the ITC's refusal to reconsider via the sunset review the original AD negligence decision given Colakoglu's exclusion from the order. This complaint rails against the commission's decision not to "decumulate" Colakoglu's imports and finding that material injury was likely to continue or recur relating to "unrevised volumes of subject imports from Turkey."