ITC Failed to Consider Impact of Oct. 7 on Israeli Exporters, Israeli Government Says
In an eight-count complaint, the Israeli government took issue Nov. 22 with the International Trade Commission’s affirmative injury finding regarding Israeli brass rods. Among other things, Tel Aviv said that the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, which occurred a week after the period of investigation ended, disincentivized underselling by the country’s exporters because it “significantly impaired” their manufacturing (Government of Israel, Ministery of Economy and Industry v. U.S., CIT # 24-00197).
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Israel also said no underselling had occurred; and if it had, it hadn’t hurt U.S. brass rod producers.
The foreign government said in its complaint, in which it provided a summary of its argument, that the ITC majority “failed to consider significant circumstances and events that occurred around the time of the injury vote,” i.e., the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
One-third of Israeli exporters’ workers during the period of review lived in the West Bank, and they were “prohibited from coming to work,” it said.
“There is no mention of the attack or the war in the majority’s opinion, despite evidence of the significant effect on production of brass rod in Israel,” it said.
This fact was cited by the lone dissenting ITC commissioner, David Johanson, it said. Johanson also found that domestic brass bar producers had experienced no perceivable injury as a result of imports from Israel.
All the commissioners found that the Israeli exporters had been underselling, and Israel agreed they had. But that underselling was only a small portion of the exporters’ overall U.S. sales -- in other instances, the exporters were actually “predominant[ly]” overselling, it claimed.
And the small amount of underselling Israeli exporters had engaged in wasn’t enough to change U.S. domestic prices, the Israeli government said. It said those prices increased over the period of inquiry, during which time domestic producers “consistently recovered increasing costs” and experienced COVID-related supply constraints.
“Based on the record as a whole, the Commission’s finding that such a small volume and change in market share is ‘significant’ runs afoul of the plain language of the statute and risks reading the term out of the statute,” it argued.
Meanwhile, other countries whose exports had been examined in the investigation -- Brazil, India, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea -- undersold in the U.S. at much higher levels than Israel and had a greater impact on U.S. industry, it said.