Aluminum Exporter’s Presence in South Korea Well-Established and Significant, Importer Says

An aluminum foil importer argued Feb. 20 that the Commerce Department was wrong to find that a South Korean exporter circumvented antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese aluminum because the underlying Chinese inputs underwent “significant” processing (Hanon Systems Alabama Corp. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00013).

The department failed to “consider and properly attribute record evidence” that showed exporter Dong-Il’s aluminum foil underwent a complete physical and chemical transformation when processed in Korea, importer Hanon Systems Alabama said. It argued that the processing “imparts the physical and mechanical properties of the aluminum foil by rolling which results in a different and significantly more expensive product.”

Importer Hanon Systems Alabama filed the complaint at the Court of International Trade to challenge Commerce's finding that Dong-Il had circumvented AD/CVD even though the exporter demonstrated otherwise regarding three of out of the five factors Commerce should have considered: level of investment, level of R&D and extent of production facilities in Korea, Hanon said.

In both its preliminary and final results, Commerce itself had found that exporter Dong-Il’s presence in Korea was not “minor or insignificant” regarding its level of investment, its amount of R&D and the extent of its production processes in the country, Hanon said.

For example, it said that the department’s preliminary analysis "determined that the level of Dong-Il’s investment in Korea is not minor or insignificant which weighs against the finding that the process of assembly or completion in Korea is minor or insignificant.”

Commerce instead relied only on the remaining two out of the five factors to make its ruling, which the importer called “unreasonable.”

Hanon also said it argued in comments on the preliminary determination that the aluminum foil industry is “well-established, existing well before the Orders were imposed.” Commerce choosing to investigate that industry runs contrary to the department’s statutory goal to focus on the establishment of new, or “screwdriver,” operations, it said.