CIT Grants Leave for AD Respondent to Reply to Remand Comments

The Court of International Trade granted a request by antidumping respondent Ellwood City Forge to reply to remand comments in an antidumping duty investigation on forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany. CIT Judge Stephen Vaden granted the May 15 request over objections by both DOJ and intervenor Edelstahl Siegen (Ellwood City Forge v. U.S., CIT # 21-00077).

In its motion, DOJ said that Ellwood's motion for leave to reply rested on the faulty premise that DOJ's remand comments included a new argument and that it was factually inaccurate. Ellwood erroneously argued that the government introduced a new argument because DOJ's remand comments cited "specific portions" of Hyundai Steel v. U.S., instead of discussing it more generally as Commerce did in its remand determination, DOJ said. "That we rely upon specific portions of Hyundai Steel in our brief, rather than the entirety of it" did not change the fact that the underlying argument is fundamentally the same, DOJ said.

Ellwood's request is "based upon a faulty recitation of the facts," Edelstahl said in its own motion. Ellwood failed to bring up alternative statutory provisions for particular market situation adjustment during the original investigation, Edelstahl said.

Both DOJ and Edelstahl had argued in their remand comments that Ellwood failed to exhaust its administrative remedies when it chose not to comment on the draft remand despite an alleged "obvious error" in Commerce's particular market situation adjustment calculations (see 2305160062). Ellwood countered by saying that the company had no cause to raise the arguments at issue during the original investigation because Edelstahl had not challenged Commerce’s PMS adjustment until the current litigation.