Contesting AD Review, German Exporter Says Other Forged Steel Products Not 'Fluid End Blocks'
German forged steel fluid end products exporter BGH Edelstahl Siegen filed a March 17 motion for judgment arguing that, in a review, the Commerce Department had included forged steel products that couldn’t be used in hydraulic pumps in the exporter’s home market sales (BGH Edelstahl Siegen GmbH v. United States, CIT # 24-00176).
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BGH said that as an antidumping duty review mandatory respondent, it reported the home market sales information for all of its end blocks -- but it told the department that a number of them didn’t meet the scope “because they were produced according to particular customer drawings and specifications for application in expressly defined end products,” such as for military use or utilization in compounding machines.
It categorized these differently so that they could be excluded from the data, it said. It said it also separated out an affiliate’s home market sales of forged bars that didn’t fit the order due to their physical characteristics.
Fluid steel end blocks, it said, are defined by the Harmonized Tariff Schedule “as parts of hydraulic fluid power pumps.” The International Trade Commission likewise described them in its injury investigation as “steel forgings that are a component of fluid end modules (“FEMs”), which are incorporated into hydraulic pumps.”
It said Commerce hadn’t questioned this “common definition”; the department instead “simply ignored the term ‘fluid end blocks’ when applying the definition of products under review to BGH’s home market sales,” relying solely on physical characteristics.
But neither the forged bars nor the other custom-made forged blocks could be used in hydraulic pumps, it claimed.
The forged bars, BGH said, “have a very small cross-sectional dimension” and are usually more than two meters long. They require a less intense forging process and different equipment to produce -- equipment its affiliate, BGH Lippendorf, didn’t have, it said.
And the blocks custom-made for the military or compounding machines “were designed and produced for specific end products unrelated to fluid end blocks or pumps,” it said.
It explained that while it couldn’t provide the drawings and specifications for the military blocks because they “are highly sensitive due to their military nature,” it did give Commerce “an applicable page of the specification under which all of the forgings supplied to this customer are covered.” On the other hand, it provided that information regarding the compounding machine blocks, it said, showing that those blocks were “very different in size and configuration” than the fluid end blocks BGH sold in the United States.
“Commerce’s contention that end-use is irrelevant to its application of the product description misses the point,” it said. “The function and design of a product is always relevant in determining what the product is.”