US, Exporter Defend Results of Remanded Scope Ruling in Steel Pipe Case
A petitioner was wrong that the trade court made "several cascading errors” in its motion remanding a scope ruling on dual-stenciled pipe by failing to consider two other cases, the U.S. and exporter Saha Thai Steel Pipe each said in reply briefs Dec. 2 (Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Company v. United States, CIT # 21-00049).
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The petitioner, Wheatland Tube, was trying to relitigate the facts of the case in its opposition to the Commerce Department’s subsequent remand results (see 2511190060), they said.
Specifically, Wheatland Tube argued that two cases required another remand of the department’s ruling so the department could return to its original decision. First was a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case, referred to in its brief as Saha Thai III, in which CAFC held Commerce had been right to find dual-stenciled pipe from Thailand was covered by an order on circular welded carbon steel pipe and tube from Thailand. In the second, referred to as Blue Pipe, the Court of International Trade sustained Commerce’s finding that Saha Thai had evaded said order.
After the remand order in this case, Commerce found a zero percent dumping margin for Saha Thai after CIT said it failed to notify the exporter of alleged deficiencies in its reporting (see 2508010059). Saha Thai was initially hit with a 37.55% rate for failing to report its U.S. sales of dual-stenciled pipe, which it claimed it hadn’t realized was covered by the order on circular welded steel pipe.
The U.S. said that the two cases weren’t enough to warrant a new remand order.
CIT had observed in its remand ruling that the question wasn’t whether Saha Thai had been required to report its dual-stenciled line pipe sales -- it “may still have been obligated” to provide it “if Commerce had requested it,” the government said. The legal question was whether Saha Thai had been provided adequate notice of its deficient reporting.
Thus, neither the ruling in Saha Thai III, the CAFC case, nor the ruling in Blue Pipe would have changed anything, it argued.
Saha Thai argued that remand comments weren’t the proper forum for what Wheatland Tube was requesting. The petitioner, it said, wanted the court to “[a]nalyze a complicated factual issue about which Defendant-Intervenor submitted no -- zero -- comments to Commerce, despite having ample opportunity to do so,” and then to overturn its own prior ruling and sustain a Commerce decision the department itself had already overwritten.
“Defendant-Intervenor is free to appeal the final ruling of this Court should they disagree with the ultimate resolution,” it said.
Both parties said that Wheatland Tube could have raised these arguments during the remand proceedings but failed to. And they both noted that Wheatland Tube had agreed that Commerce complied with CIT’s remand order, which was the "sole issue before this Court at this time," Saha Thai said.