Petitioner Says New CAFC Ruling Necessitates Another Remand of Dual-Stenciled Steel Pipe Review
Petitioner Wheatland Tube Company opposed Nov. 17 the Commerce Department’s redetermination on remand in an antidumping duty scope case on dual-stenciled pipe, saying that the “entire house of cards on which the Remand Order was built has now collapsed” since the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a Court of International Trade ruling on another suit (Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Company v. United States, CIT # 21-00049).
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“[T]his Court made several cascading errors in actions brought by Saha Thai that -- if left uncorrected -- will constitute a gross abortion of justice,” it said.
CAFC held in another case, Saha Thai III, that Commerce was correct to find that dual-stenciled pipe from Thailand was covered under an antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Thailand (see 2405150027). CIT’s decision to remand Commerce’s identical ruling in the present case, Saha Thai II, was therefore the first error, Wheatland Tube said.
The trade court’s second error was to, based on its first finding, hold that Saha Thai’s failure to report its dual-stenciled pipe sales was a “mere ‘misunderstanding of [Commerce’s] instructions’” rather than “intentional conduct,” thus requiring Commerce to provide notice of the deficiency, the petitioner said. It noted that CIT itself held in yet another recent case, Blue Pipe, that CBP had been right to find Saha Thai evaded the AD order in question.
Further arguing the second point, it said that Saha Thai had been “engaged in an intentional scheme” to hide its dual-stenciled pipe sales data as it attempted to evade AD.
The 2016-17 administrative review of the AD order on circular welded carbon steel pipe resulted in a “substantially higher” dumping margin for Saha Thai, Wheatland Tube said. As a result, Saha Thai stopped selling single-stenciled pipe to the United States and drastically increased its sales of dual-stenciled pipe to Thai exporter Blue Pipe, which then resold the product in the U.S. “to Saha Thai’s own partners,” it said.
It preemptively argued that it hadn’t exhausted the argument because Blue Pipe hadn’t come out until after the conclusion of the present case’s administrative proceedings. It also argued that it was only raising a question of law and that it couldn’t have its claim earlier, before the result in Saha Thai II.