Ukrainian Pipe Company Challenges Lack of CEP Offset in Antidumping Investigation

The Commerce Department's decision not to grant a constructed export price offset in an antidumping duty investigation based on the claim that mandatory respondent Interpipe Ukraine didn't separately report the selling functions and the level at which it performed those functions from each home market channel of distribution runs contrary to the law, Interpipe argued in an Oct. 21 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Interpipe also pushed back against Commerce's decision to deduct Section 232 duties from its U.S. price when calculating its dumping margin (Interpipe Ukraine LLC, et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00530).

Interpipe Ukraine challenges the final results of the AD duty investigation of seamless carbon and alloy steel standard, line and pressure pipe from Ukraine, since it served as the investigation's sole mandatory respondent. There are three elements of its case against the final results: the issue over the constructed export price offset, the Section 232 deduction from U.S. price, and the inclusion of current asset sales for inputs such as raw materials in the general and administrative expense calculation.

Commerce unlawfully deviated from its prior practice of granting a CEP offset to Interpipe, the complaint said. Further, the agency required Interpipe to provide a quantitative analysis for the offset -- a move that Interpipe also claims is illegal. "Moreover, Interpipe did, in fact, provide a quantitative analysis demonstrating that indirect selling expenses vary between the home market level of trade and the CEP level of trade," Interpipe argued. "Therefore, Commerce’s decision that a CEP offset is not warranted in the Final AD Determination is not supported by substantial evidence on the record and is otherwise not in accordance with law."

Interpipe, like many other AD/CVD investigation respondents, argued that the decision to deduct Section 232 duties from the U.S. price was unlawful. Holding that they are akin to AD/CVD and Section 201 duties that have typically not been deducted from the U.S. price, the respondent said that the Section 232 duties are "temporary and tentative."

In its third argument against the investigation's final results, Interpipe said that Commerce erred by continuing to exclude the other income and expenses related to the sales of current assets such as raw materials and scrap from the G&A expense calculation. Commerce held that the sale of these items was a separate line of business other than Interpipe's main business, which is selling pipe.

"As these sales of current assets like raw materials were reported in other operating income and expense and not in revenue and cost of sales, these sales were not a line of business but rather were incidental to Interpipe’s main line of business: the manufacture and sale of pipes," the complaint said. "As such, these are related to Interpipe’s general business of producing and selling pipes and should be included in the G&A."