Flange Exporter Contests Use of 'd' Test in New AD Suit at CIT

Exporter ULMA Forja, S.Coop filed a complaint on Sept. 17 at the Court of International Trade to contest the Commerce Department's differential pricing analysis in the 2022-23 review of the antidumping duty order on finished carbon steel flanges from Spain (ULMA Forja, S.Coop v. United States, CIT # 24-00162).

In the review, Commerce used its differential pricing analysis, which is used to root out "masked" dumping, to find that the prices of 76.75% of ULMA's sales differed significantly across purchasers, regions or time periods. As part of its analysis, the agency used the Cohen's d test, which has been subject to extensive litigation at CIT and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

As a result of the analysis, the agency switched to its average-to-transaction method to set the AD rate for ULMA's U.S. sales, calculating a 1.89% AD rate. The default average-to-average comparison method would have led to a zero percent dumping margin, the exporter claimed.

The respondent argued that Commerce erred in using the Cohen's d test by using a "simple average instead of a weighted average to calculate the denominator of the d coefficient." ULMA said this move went against the codified approach found in the "statistical literature." The lack of a reasonable justification for this departure mars the review, the complaint said.

ULMA also maligned Commerce's use of the Cohen's d test for its failure to use comparison groups that are normally distributed, equal in size or with equal variances. "As such, Commerce’s application did not meet the assumptions of normality and equal variances on which the test is based," the brief said.