American Pipe Manufacturers Challenge AD Investigations at Trade Court

Both the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission committed various errors in their antidumping duty investigations on oil country tubular goods (OCTG) from Argentina, Mexico, Russia and South Korea, plaintiffs Tenaris Bay City, Maverick Tube, Ipsco Tubulars and Siderca said in three related complaints, all filed Jan. 13 at the Court of International Trade.

The first (Tenaris Bay City, Inc., et al. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00002) and second (Tenaris Bay City, Inc., et al. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00344) complaints argued that the ITC improperly cumulated OCTG from the four countries despite evidence that Mexican and Argentinian OCTG had different uses, were sold to different users and generally did not compete with Russian and South Korean OCTG. The plaintiffs further argued that the ITC did not consider relevant economic factors when analyzing harm to the U.S. domestic OCTG industry, and claimed that the ITC did not properly weigh the dramatic decline in demand and prices for OCTG caused by "the Saudi/Russian oil supply dispute" and the COVID-19 pandemic; high inventory levels of OCTG held by distributors; high prices for hot-rolled-coil, the "major input for welded OCTG production"; or other supply constraints such as labor shortages.

The complaints also alleged that the ITC ignored the increases in OCTG volumes and "instead relied only on a decrease in the market share" of imports between 2021 and 2022. In addition, the plaintiffs argued that the ITC overly relied on evidence of lost sales and revenue from the petitions and didn't sufficiently address counter arguments.

"The Commission concluded that underselling led to the domestic industry’s decrease in market share, but did not reach a conclusion as to whether domestic producers would have been able to increase their prices in the absence of subject imports," the complaint said. The plaintiffs said the court should therefore remand the final determination back to the ITC.

In the third complaint (Tenaris Bay City, Inc. et al. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00343), the plaintiffs argued that Commerce incorrectly evaluated industry support calculations by the petitioners. "AD and CVD petitions must have the support of companies/workers constituting more than 50 percent of the industry expressing either support or opposition," the plaintiffs said. The petitioners incorrectly stated that two of Tenaris USA's plants were represented by United Steelworkers, which skewed the support calculations.

The underlying calculation was also based on "anomalous" and "unreliable" 2020 data and, contrary to the statute, the petitioners relied on shipment data rather than on production data, the complaint said. The various alleged errors mean that the entire proceeding may not have been filed by or on behalf of the domestic industry, and, therefore, Commerce lacked the authority to initiate the investigation, the plaintiffs argued.

Commerce should not have been able to determine, with data it had, whether enough production was encapsulated to create the required majority of domestic production to support an investigation, the plaintiffs argued. The plaintiffs therefore asked the court to hold that the initiation was unsupported and that the final determination should be remanded to Commerce.