ITC Should Have Ignored Second Petition in Similar Injury Case, Importer Argues

The International Trade Commission "failed to maintain the integrity of its own proceedings" when it found that freight rail couplers from China and Mexico injured the domestic industry despite an earlier finding to the contrary, importer Strato argued in an Oct. 11 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Strato v. U.S., CIT # 23-00158).

In 2021, the Coalition of Freight Coupler Producers filed a petition asking the ITC to find material injury due to imports of certain freight rail couplers and parts from China, Strato said. In July 2022, the ITC issued a unanimous negative injury determination, saying that the petitioners had failed to show that the subject imports had significant price depressing effects, had significantly undersold the domestic like product, or that lower offers undercut domestic producers’ prices.

Two months after the determination, the same coalition filed a new petition with the ITC, alleging that certain freight railcar couplers, consisting of coupler bodies and knuckles and parts thereof imported from Mexico and China, were materially injuring the domestic industry and threatening the domestic industry with material injury.

Strato argued that the two investigations were essentially the same and that the ITC failed to address the limits on its ability to review its prior negative determinations as laid out under Section 751(b) of the Tariff Act. The Commission should have declined to review the petition based on prior results, the importer argued.

The ITC also decided to cumulate imports despite imports from China being subject to a prior negative determination, Strato said. Stato accused the ITC of ignoring the Statement of Administrative Action to the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, which directs that the key issue was whether the specific imports “are the subject of terminated investigations," not whether the current investigation into the imports has itself been terminated. Even if the ITC rightly found that Mexican imports had caused domestic injury, it failed to adequately explain its affirmative determination of injury against China in light of its prior negative determination, Strato said.

The Commission also incorrectly accepted evidence or findings that it had previously rejected in the prior investigation, Strato said. It ignored evidence of the domestic industry’s improvement by attributing it to the provisional duties imposed in the earlier investigation.

Stato's complaint followed a similar filing by Wabtec, another major importer of couplers, in September (see 2309130033).