ITC Unlawfully Adjusted Import Data to Determine Negligibility, Petitioners Say

The International Trade Commission should have continued its 2023 injury investigation of aluminum extrusion imports from the Dominican Republic, not ruled the imports were “negligible,” domestic petitioners argued Dec. 22 at the Court of International Trade (U.S. Aluminum Extruders Coalition v. United States, CIT # 23-00270).

Domestic petitioner U.S. Aluminum Extruders Coalition, along with United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, are contesting the ITC's 2023 negative preliminary injury determination that ended an antidumping duty investigation on aluminum extrusions from the Dominican Republic.

The ITC initially found the volume of the imported merchandise from the Dominican Republic was not negligible for purposes of an injury investigation. It determined otherwise only after “extensive adjustments to the import statistics dataset,” the petitioners said.

Those adjustments included removing aluminum extrusions already subject to existing orders on the products from China, and adding and removing import data received from CBP in response to questionnaires, they said.

“The Commission explained that it had to rely on such adjusted official U.S. import statistics data ‘given the low coverage afforded by importer questionnaire responses’ at the preliminary phase,” they said.

Usually negligible imports are aggregated with those from other AD investigations, the petitioners said, but a provision of the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA-DR, prevents that in this case.