ITC Failed to Consider Unique Conditions in OCTG Injury Analysis, Importer Argues

The International Trade Commission performed only a "cursory analysis" and presumed causation where none existed in its antidumping duty injury investigation on oil country tubular goods from Argentina and Mexico, Tenaris Bay City and consolidated plaintiffs from two other cases said in an Oct. 12 reply brief at the Court of International Trade (Tenaris Bay City, Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00344).

In their May motion for judgment, Tenaris Bay City, along with Maverick Tube, Ipsco Tubulars, Tenaris Global Services and Siderca, told the court that the ITC had failed to consider the "unprecedented conditions" of competition during the period under investigation. Now the plaintiffs added that the ITC’s failure to assess volumes within the context of market conditions tainted its later price effects analysis.

Finding import volumes to be "significant" requires consideration of the conditions of competition in the affected industry, Tenaris said. The ITC ignored or misinterpreted other court cases when it decided not to consider evidence of unique market conditions during the period of investigation, it said. The ITC must evaluate "significant" import volumes on a case-by-case basis, based on its own cited cases, Tenaris argued. Because the ITC relied on comparison data to find alleged underselling, any inaccuracies in that pricing would have led to a tainted injury analysis.

Tenaris cited recent cases in which the ITC found that whether or not "imports were needed" to supply the market was essential in determining volume "significance." The record was clear that when demand began to increase, U.S. customers couldn't obtain sufficient OCTG, Tenaris said. A large majority of U.S. purchasers reported that firms had been unable to obtain OCTG between January and October of 2021, citing reduced mill capacity in 2020 and difficulties in restoring it due to labor and raw material shortages. The ITC merely "speculated" that U.S. producers lost market share due to underselling but ignored evidence of high demand and constrained domestic supply, Tenaris said.

Any injury to the domestic industry was a result of those unique conditions and was not caused by OCTG imports. Reduced demand for petroleum and the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the need for OCTG, Tenaris argued. High inventory levels and de-stocking of U.S. inventories combined with extremely high prices for hot-rolled coil steel and labor shortages also contributed to domestic industry injury. The ITC made its determination solely on the absolute increase in import volumes, but failed to tie those volumes directly to domestic injury, Tenaris said (see 2305240049).

Petitioners led by U.S. Steel argued that Tenaris had backed itself into a corner with contradictory claims about the fungibility of welded vs. seamless OCTG and was forced into asking the court to impermissably "reweigh the evidence" (see 2308240061). Tenaris disagreed, arguing that it never said seamless OCTG from Argentina and Mexico and welded OCTG from South Korea were separate like products in the context of this investigation. The ITC is bound to only consider evidence on the record of the investigation at issue and has acknowledged that separate investigations are pursued on their own, Tenaris said.

Consolidated plaintiff TMK Group said in its own brief that the ITC's decision to cumulate Russian imports was unsupported by substantial evidence. After February 2022, Russian OCTG's access to the U.S. "profoundly closed" to the point that Russian imports were "effectively excluded" from the U.S. and had no competitive overlap with OCTG imports from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, or domestically produced OCTG, the TMK Group said.