Turkish Steel Exporter Says Record Consistent That Home Market Prices Were Set in Dollars
A Turkish hot-rolled steel exporter March 18 defended its appeal over the currency that “controls” its products’ pricing against opposition by the U.S. and domestic petitioners, saying the petitioners had done their math wrong (Habas Sinai ve Tibbi Gazlar Istihsal Endustrisi v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1158).
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The exporter, Habas Sinai ve Tibbi Gazlar Istihsal Endustrisi, disagreed with the U.S.’s and petitioners’ claims (see 2402260048) that substantial evidence supported the Commerce Department’s decision, during its 2018-2019 review of the antidumping duty order on its products, to value Habas’ home market sales in Turkish lira rather than U.S. dollars. As it had in its initial appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the exporter said that its home market price negotiations, invoices and records had all used U.S. dollars (see 2401180036).
The U.S. and petitioners argued that the invoices didn't actually control the prices paid by Habas’ home market customers, but this was “simply not true,” Habas said.
For example, the petitioners claimed that, according to the exchange rate at the time, the lira amount paid by one customer didn't match the amount it owed in dollars, Habas said. But it did, the exporter said.
Habas also pointed to “an order form, email confirmation for the sale, and the associated invoice,” all which identified the “‘efektif fiyat‘ -- effective price” in U.S. dollars. The Turkish lira prices on invoices were “not the final prices between parties” and only “represented the USD value on the date the invoice was issued by,” it said.
“Indeed, here, the invoices cannot be unreliable as they do reconcile to the audited financial statements,” it said. “Those same invoices, along with customer payments, negotiations, and purchase orders, demonstrate that the controlling currency is USD and, thus, the controlling prices are in USD.”
Habas said that a determination the government was relying “heavily” on -- a 2018 decision regarding stainless steel flanges from China that found individual sales invoices were of “minimal utility” on their own -- didn't apply to its own case. In that determination, Commerce was weighing whether or not a respondent had fully complied with a request for supporting documents, it said. But it said it had fully participated in its own investigation, and added that Commerce had never asked it for information regarding the currency controlling its home market prices.
Habas also said the appellees hadn’t shown how Commerce wasn’t deviating from prior practice by refusing to use U.S. dollars for Habas’ home market prices determination.
In the department’s prior decisions, it looked to whether a respondent’s prices were set in, negotiated in and controlled by U.S. dollars, Habas said. A respondent in a similar case on cold-rolled steel from Turkey also calculated the lira figures in invoices by the exchange rate between lira and dollars on the date of the invoices’ issuances, but its home market prices were set by Commerce in U.S. dollars, the exporter protested.
The department’s failure to use U.S. dollars “causes a great distortion of [Habas’] margin,” because large fluctuations in the lira’s value are “endemic” to Turkey, the exporter said.
The appeal comes from a Court of International Trade decision on Sept. 14, 2023, that Commerce was right to use the lira because the record didn’t show U.S. dollars controlled the prices Habas’ home market customers paid, as the department couldn’t assign a dollar amount to every payment (see 2309140049).