'Rough' Pipe Fitting Distinct From 'Unfinished' Ones, US Argues Again After Remand
The U.S. again said July 30 that “rough” butt-weld pipe fittings were distinct from “unfinished” ones, supporting a Commerce Department redetermination on remand (see 2505050031) (Tube Forgings of America, Inc. v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 23-00231).
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Domestic producers Tube Forgings of America and Mill Iron Works argued in June that “rough” and “unfinished” carbon steel butt-weld pipe fittings are the same product. They said the department’s finding otherwise in its recent remand redetermination went against “decades-long practice” and statements by industry executives (see 2506160063).
The U.S. disagreed. In its July 30 brief, it said the remand redetermination complied with Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Grove’s Jan. 2 remand order, which instructed Commerce to address a 2023 circumvention inquiry ruling that she described as inconsistent with the current case’s covered merchandise referral (see 2501020044).
Commerce’s remand redetermination correctly found that the 2023 circumvention inquiry ruling doesn’t conflict with the department’s more recent covered merchandise referral, the government argued.
The department explained on remand that its use of the term “unfinished butt-weld pipe fittings” in the 2023 circumvention inquiry was inaccurate, the U.S. said.
The fact Commerce even conducted a circumvention inquiry at all in 2023 supported its later finding in its covered merchandise referral, it argued. It said that if Commerce “truly” held that rough pipe fittings were unfinished ones, the inquiry wouldn’t have been needed, as “rough shapes would have already been explicitly covered by the scope of the Order.”
“In the Thailand Circumvention Inquiry, despite Commerce’s inartful description … the product at-issue was not already covered by the scope of the Order and Commerce conducted a circumvention inquiry to determine whether it should be,” it said.
It also argued that the department’s redetermination was supported by substantial evidence -- and specifically by the language of the antidumping and countervailing duty petitions for Chinese-origin butt-weld pipe fittings. The petition “distinguishes between merchandise that has undergone the first stage of the production process and merchandise that has undergone the first and second stages of production,” it said.
For example, it said, merchandise at the end of the first production stage is described by the petition as “bent pipe.” The petition explained that bent pipe is only considered an “unfinished ‘elbow’” after further processing, it said.
The U.S. acknowledged that the petition didn’t explicitly equate bent pipe as either “a ‘rough fitting’ or something else,” but said it still “makes the distinction between a product that has undergone the first step in the production process (i.e., bent pipe) and one that has undergone a second, more crucial process (i.e., an unfinished fitting).”
“Commerce reasoned that ‘[i]t would serve no purpose to state this in the petition if not to draw a distinction between products that have only undergone the first production stage and products that have undergone the first and second stages’ and that ‘the distinction indicates that the fitting is in unfinished form,’” the government said.