Commerce Can't Ignore Court's Ruling in AD Scope Decision, DOJ Says in Response to US Industry
The Commerce Department cannot ignore a Court of International Trade's ruling that the evidence on which the agency relied to issue a scope ruling was not valid in its scope redetermination, the Department of Justice said in a Feb. 4 brief. Replying to defendant-intervenor ASC Engineered Solutions' comments on Commerce's decision to exclude certain flanges from the scope of the antidumping duty order on cast iron pipe fittings from China, DOJ said that while it initially agreed with ASC's arguments, it cannot simply disregard the court's decision (MCC Holdings dba Crane Resistoflex v. U.S., CIT #18-00248).
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Importer Crane Resistoflex initially sought a scope ruling on nine models of its ductile iron lap joint flanges. Commerce said five of the nine models were described by the first sentence of the second paragraph of the ADD order. Following an initial remand from Judge Timothy Stanceu, Commerce relied on brochures from the petitioner in the case, Anvil International, along with the petition itself, to find that the AD duty order covers the flanges in question. Stanceu was not convinced, since neither the petition nor the scope language of the AD duty order touch on flanges, remanding the matter to Commerce.
The agency came back and said it found Crane's ductile iron flanges to be outside the scope of the order, even though it continued to find that Crane's flanges are pipe fittings that have the same physical characteristics as those described in the first paragraph of the scope. ASC took issue with this in its comments on Commerce's remand, arguing that Commerce shouldn't have considered "(k)(1)" materials over the plain meaning of the scope (see 2201200075).
DOJ replied by clarifying that Commerce had to follow the court's ruling. Stanceu said that the evidence that the agency used was not acceptable, so Commerce cannot just reassert its interpretation that the scope language includes Crane's flanges, the brief said. ASC further argued that Stanceu misunderstood elements of the International Trade Commission report, ultimately "implying that Commerce should simply disagree" with CIT's interpretation of the report. "However, Commerce is not free simply to ignore the Court's decision, even if it disagrees," the brief said.