Petitioner's Complaint Alleges Errors in Greek Pipe AD Review

An antidumping duty petitioner said Feb. 17 that the Commerce Department accidentally included offsets for scrap not produced during the investigation period in its calculation of an exporter's normal value in an administrative review of the antidumping duty orders on Greek pipe (The American Line Pipe Producers Trade Association Committee v. U.S., CIT # 24-00012).

The American Line Pipe Producers Association Trade Committee said in its complaint that it was contesting parts of the transactions disregarded analysis Commerce conducted for its 2021-2022 AD review on large diameter welded pipe from Greece that found a zero percent dumping margin for respondent Corinth Pipeworks Pipe Industry. Because the respondent sold some of the scrap produced during its manufacturing process to its affiliates, the department constructed a normal value for the exporter by revising Corinth Pipeworks’ scrap offsets via a comparison between the exporter’s transfer prices and overall market prices, the petitioner said.

The petitioner said it had pointed out in comments on Commerce’s preliminary results, however, that this “failed to capture the full extent of the adjustment necessary for CPW’s byproduct.” Commerce should have used the scrap’s standard value instead of Corinth Pipeworks’ transfer prices, it said.

The committee also said in its complaint that the department failed to exclude from its analysis all scrap not created during production of Corinth Pipeworks’ pipes during the period of review, even though it said it would.

“Commerce’s analysis only partially excluded certain types of scrap that it intended to fully exclude from the final results calculations,” it said.

It said Commerce failed to exclude some scrap types from its transfer price calculations; from both the numerator and denominator of its equation locating the percentage of Corinth Pipeworks’ total scrap sold to its affiliates; and from its calculation of the scrap’s total share in Corinth Pipeworks’ overall byproduct offset.

The department’s “mistaken calculations” therefore “incorrectly caused” some of the exporter’s home market sales to pass the cost test, the petitioner said. As a result, the petitioner said, Commerce wrongly relied on them as the basis of Corinth Pipeworks’ profit and selling expense ratios in its construction of the exporter’s normal value.

The petitioner said Commerce’s failure to exclude scrap not generated during the period of review, as well as its rejection of several of the committee’s ministerial error allegations, were not supported by substantial evidence nor in accordance with law.