Commerce Erred in Data Selection for Constructed Value Calculation, OCTG Exporter Argues

The Commerce Department's constructed value profit and selling expenses calculation for the 2019-2020 antidumping duty administrative review on oil country tubular goods from South Korea remains unsupported by substantial evidence after a remand, South Korean exporter Hyundai Steel said in its Sept. 12 comments to the Court of International Trade. Hyundai partially opposed the remand results despite the department's lowering of Hyundai's dumping margin, from 19.54% to 9.63% (see 2308160065) (Hyundai Steel Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00138).

The remand results show a misreading of the statute concerning constructed value profit and selling expenses, Hyundai said. Commerce failed to reconsider its decision to calculate Hyundai's CV profit and selling expenses using the third-country sales data of the other mandatory respondent, SeAH Steel, Hyundai said.

Instead of “reexamin[ing] the administrative record” as ordered by CIT (see 2306090053), Commerce "recapitulates the same bases upon which it decided to use SeAH Steel’s third-country sales data in its original determination."

Despite Commerce's statements to the contrary, "The statutory preference ... is for the actual data of the specific exporter or producer being examined," Hyundai said. Both sides agree that data didn't exist in the investigation and Commerce is allowed to select from alternatives without any preference.

In its original final results and on remand, Commerce attempted to justify a statutory preference for SeAH Steel’s third-country sales of foreign like product as the basis for CV profit where no preference existed, Hyundai. "Given that no such legal preference exists," the issue should be again remanded, Hyundai said.

Commerce's specific choice of SeAH Steel's data should also be remanded. SeAH Steel’s third-country sales were not representative of Hyundai's due to differences in average variable costs of manufacture, relative number of sales records, control numbers and customers, Hyundai said.

Hyundai argued that Commerce selected SeAH's data "simply because it contained OCTG" but failed to recognize that SeAH’s Kuwaiti sales didn't reasonably reflect the profitability of Hyundai OCTG sales. Hyundai argued for the use of "alternate financial data" based on products within the same general category as OCTG.

When it brought the case, Hyundai argued that the use of SeAH's business proprietary information was unreasonable since Hyundai had no means to review the underlying data (see 2205100033).