ITC Opposes Bid to Consolidate 3 CAFC Appeals on Sunset Review of AD Order
The International Trade Commission on Sept. 23 opposed exporter Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari's (Erdemir's) motion to consolidate three of its appeals at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit involving the sunset review of the antidumping duty order on hot-rolled steel flat products from Turkey (Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari v. International Trade Commission, Fed. Cir. # 24-2242).
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The ITC said not only is the motion to consolidate technically moot, since the court designated all three cases as companion cases assigned to the same merits panel, but that consolidation will only "potentially create unnecessary conflation of issues." The three cases present different "procedural postures" and have different standards of review and records, the brief said.
Erdemir's suits center on the fact that Colakoglu, Turkey's largest steel exporter, was excluded from the parallel countervailing duty order, though an error saw the company included in the AD order. Colakoglu sued and was dropped from the order, though the ITC concurrently began its sunset review of the AD order.
Erdemir filed three cases, the first substantively challenging the sunset review itself, claiming that the ITC was wrong to find that dumping would continue as a result of the order being removed. The second suit challenges the ITC for allegedly failing to reconsider the AD negligibility determination in the original investigation. The third suit contests the ITC's refusal to conduct a changed circumstances review (see 2408150004). The Court of International Trade dismissed all three, though the cases weren't consolidated and were handled by two different judges (see 2406200045 and 2407220036).
In response to an attempt to consolidate the cases at the Federal Circuit, the ITC noted that Erdemir at no point before the trade court sought to consolidate its three cases. In each case, the judge "individually assessed and addressed the case-specific factual and legal issues under the appropriate standards of review pertinent to each respective case. We respectfully request that this Court do the same."