ITC Upholds Injury Finding on Russian Steel Pipe After Remand

The International Trade Commission on Feb. 9 upheld on remand its prior finding that domestic industries were injured by dumped imports of seamless carbon and alloy steel standard, line and pressure pipe from Russia, rejecting an exporter’s claims that evidence showed the ITC’s analysis had missed some imports from other countries (PAO TMK v. United States, CIT # 21-00532).

Russian pipe exporter PAO TMK brought the case to the Court of International Trade several years back, arguing the ITC had erred by failing to include all relevant imports of pipe from Germany and Mexico in its injury finding as part of an antidumping duty investigation on the product (see 2207250047).

Specifically, TMK took issue with the ITC’s sole reliance on statistics reported by two unnamed companies, one from Germany and one from Mexico, on all the pipe imports that came from each country, respectively. TMK said it repeatedly asked the ITC to use Customs Net Import File data instead, as, even though that data was incomplete, it contradicted the unnamed companies’ reports.

The ITC responded that it relied on all available, relevant data (see 2302130007), but CIT agreed with TMK and remanded the investigation with orders to the ITC to take the exporter’s comments and address its claims (see 2310200052).

On remand, the ITC reconsidered the “record as a whole” and saw no reason to deviate from its earlier ruling, it said.

The committee said it was correct to rely on data from the unnamed companies because they were the only exporters of the pipe from their respective countries. The CBP data TMK had argued showed more exporters existed than were reported was too broad to be used, as it also included import data on out-of-scope products such as steel pipe less than 16 inches in diameter, it said.

TMK’s claim was also contradicted by other record evidence, the ITC said. It said several Mexican and German companies listed in CBP’s data as exporters of the pipe had certified their exports were not in-scope. Also, the unnamed Mexican company the ITC relied on was “by far the largest importer from Mexico,” making reliance on its information reasonable, the committee said.

Meanwhile, another piece of TMK’s evidence, a bill of lading that TMK alleged demonstrated another German company was exporting steel pipe, “does not provide enough detail to determine whether its imports are within the scope,” the ITC said.

Finally, the ITC rejected TMK’s claim that CBP data showed another German company paid duties under an antidumping duty order on steel pipe, saying that those duties could have been on a different order with a different scope.

TMK’s argument is premised on the scope of the small diameter seamless carbon and alloy standard, line and pressure pipe from Germany order "completely overlapping or being completely encompassed by the scope of the current investigations,” it said. “However, TMK failed to provide any information or analysis supporting this premise.”