Trade Court Sustains Slashed AD Rate for Korean Large Power Transformer Exporter

The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 19 opinion said the Commerce Department properly allowed respondent Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. to supplement its questionnaire response on remand by providing additional information pertaining to service-related revenues and expenses. Judge Mark Barnett said the supplement was permitted pursuant to a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision, which said that Hyundai should have been given the chance to supplement the record and that Commerce's use of partial adverse facts available was "unsupported by substantial evidence."

No party contested the record, leading Barnett to uphold the remand results, which were issued as part of the 2013-14 review of the antidumping duty order on large power transformers from South Korea. On remand, Commerce used Hyundai's data, cutting its dumping rate from 16.13% to 4.69%.

The case dealt with Commerce's methodology for valuing service-related revenue in setting normal value and sales price. Initially on remand at the trade court, Hyundai asked the agency to allow it to submit additional data -- a request Commerce denied after finding the respondent failed to respond to the best of its ability in the review and hitting it with an AFA rate. The Federal Circuit reversed CIT's opinion sustaining this determination, finding that the rejection of Hyundai's submissions was an impermissible basis for AFA (see 2205240028).

The agency on remand issued a request to Hyundai for its full sales documents that have revised home market and U.S. sales databases that include all service-related revenues and their expenses. Commerce "accepted this information and recalculated the final antidumping duty margin for Hyundai."

(Hitachi Energy USA v. United States, Slip Op. 23-135, CIT #16-00054, dated 09/19/23; Judge: Mark Barnett; Attorneys: R. Alan Luberda of Kelley Drye for plaintiff Hitachi Energy; John Todor for defendant U.S. government; David Bond of White & Case for defendant-intervenors Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. and Hyundai Corp. USA)