CIT Upholds Decision to Hike AD Rates on Mexican Exporters by Fixing Ministerial Errors

The Court of International Trade in a July 19 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's decision to raise the dumping margins in the 2018-19 administrative review of the antidumping duties on heavy-walled rectangular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Mexico for mandatory respondents Maquilacero and Prolamsa. The margins were raised from 0% to 3.48% for Maquilacero. and from 0% to 2.11%. for Prolamsa.

Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said Commerce properly corrected ministerial errors alleged by petitioner Nucor Corp. in Maquilacero's rate by "removing the inadvertent zeros within the calculation programming" and dropping data from the time before the review period. The judge held that Maquilacero's three claims against the agency's corrections were already dismissed by the trade court in its previous opinion.

In the review, Commerce used Maquilacero's cost of production database in which the company reported its hot-rolled coil cost for each quarter of the review period. However, the agency used sequential values instead of Maquilacero's reported quarterly hot-rolled coil price data, leading Nucor to object to the use of the sequential values. The agency dropped their use, though it mistakenly replaced them with zeros for the quarter immediately preceding the review period.

Commerce said on remand it did not mean to do this, adjusting the cost recovery benchmark by "revising the programming language that the Court previously held was responsible for the ministerial error" and limiting the quarters under consideration to those within the review period, which resulted in the 3.48% dumping margin for Maquilacero. Choe-Groves said since Commerce corrected the ministerial errors, the remand results are supported.

Maquilacero argued that the alleged errors are not ministerial in nature, were discoverable after the publication of the preliminary results and thus untimely raised, and were not required to be fixed by Commerce. Choe-Groves said she addressed all of these claims in the last opinion in favor of Nucor and the government.

The judge also sustained the agency's decision to fix its currency conversion mistakes made in calculating Prolamsa's rate. On remand, Commerce addressed its errors by "converting home market packing expenses and home market inventory carrying costs to U.S. Dollars before calculating home market net price," and "correcting the foreign unit dollar price equation to only convert the level of trade adjustment and difference in merchandise adjustment variables into U.S. Dollars." Prolamsa did not comment on the changes, leading Choe-Groves to sustain its rate hike.

(Nucor Tubular Products v. United States, Slip Op. 23-104, CIT #21-00543, dated 07/19/23, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves. Attorneys: Alan Price of Wiley Rein for plaintiff Nucor; Claudia Burke for defendant U.S. government; David Bond of White & Case for defendant-intervenors Productos Laminados de Monterrey S.A. de C.V. and Prolamsa; Diana Quaia of ArentFox Schiff for defendant-intervenor Maquilacero)