US Steel Companies Tell CAFC Turkish Lira Controlled Exporter's Home Market Sales

Three U.S. steel companies, Cleveland-Cliffs, Steel Dynamics and SSAB Enterprises, told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that Turkish exporter Habas failed to show that the Commerce Department's finding that Habas' Turkish lira price, and not the U.S. dollar price, controlled the amount owed by the exporter's customers at the time of payment was unsupported. Filing a reply brief on Feb. 26, the steel companies said Habas' arguments, which were "long on verbiage and obfuscation but short on specificity and clarity," only presumed the agency's finding to be wrong and did not actually show that it was (Habas Sinai ve Tibbi Gazlar Istihsal Endustrisi v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1158).

"That omission is fatal to the appeal," the brief said, adding that the case itself is a "very odd appeal."

In the 2018-19 review of the antidumping duty order on hot-rolled steel from Turkey, Habas submitted home market sales invoices that showed a price in both Turkish lira and U.S. dollars. Commerce turned down the chance to use the U.S. dollar price in calculating Habas' dumping margin after finding that Habas failed to show that the U.S. dollar price controlled the amount paid by the company's customers and that the dollar values couldn't be reconciled to Habas' financial accounting system.

The Court of International Trade sustained this finding. The court noted that while Habas gave evidence that its prices were negotiated, ordered and set in U.S. dollars on the invoice date, Commerce found that Habas didn't show that those prices ultimately controlled the ultimate payment. In fact, the record actually showed that it was lira on the invoices controlling price (see 2309140049).

The U.S. steel companies echoed these findings in replying to Habas' opening claims. In the review, the invoice listed prices in Turkish lira, and while that invoice showed an exchange rate and a U.S. dollar value, Commerce found that it was the Turkish lira value -- not the U.S. dollar value -- "that controlled how much the customer paid." This was clear from Habas' documentation for an individual sample sale and the "aggregate sales values reported by Habas, which reconciled to the company's financial accounting system on a [Turkish lira] basis, but not on a [U.S. dollar] basis," the brief said.

In its opening brief, Habas said that its documents show that the U.S. dollar price controls the ultimate amount paid since prices were negotiated in U.S. dollars, and the dollar to lira conversion was included on the invoice. The steel companies said this is "demonstrably false," going through a series of redacted numbers listed on the invoice. The brief said that if the lira price did control, the customer would have simply paid the dollar equivalent of the Turkish lira amount owed, "using the exchange rate in effect on the date of payment," but this is not what happened.