ITC Says Aluminum Extrusion Imports Oversold Domestic Products Two-Thirds of Review Period
Filing its own brief in support of its negative injury determination regarding aluminum extrusions from multiple countries, the International Trade Commission said Aug. 11 that it reasonably found that aluminum extrusion imports didn’t significantly undersell domestic products, noting the imports oversold them about two-thirds of the time and only undersold them the other one-third (U.S. Aluminum Extruders Coalition v. United States, CIT # 24-00209).
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It said the petitioners, U.S. Aluminum Extruders Coalition and United Steelworkers, were just asking the trade court to reweigh evidence already properly considered during the investigation's administrative proceedings. The investigation covered extrusions from China, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.
The petitioners brought their 2024 case arguing that the ITC’s decision was based on unreliable evidence and saying that the commission should have looked to other evidence, including "emails and hearing testimony" and 10 data points the ITC said resulted from “self-serving tabulation.” They called one importer’s pricing data “dubious” because the importer submitted revisions for it two days before the record closed.
But the ITC reasonably relied on its “traditional” practice of conducting a quarterly price analysis when it found that there had been no significant underselling, it said.
The ITC did consider the petitioners’ other evidence, it said. It said that although it examined the 11 data points raised by the petitioners -- 10 of which the petitioners said demonstrated underselling -- it reasonably determined them to be outweighed by the pricing data showing overselling and the lack of any evidence indicating lost sales.
Testimony also showed extrusion purchasers placed significant importance on factors other than price in their purchasing decisions, it said. Further, purchasers’ questionnaires didn’t indicate the levels of lost sales alleged by the petitioners, it said. For example, it said, only two of 25 responders said that domestic producers “reduced their prices to make a sale against low-priced subject import competition.”
Meanwhile, data provided by the petitioners showing that average unit values (AUVs) of imports were “generally lower” than those of the domestic product was also of “little weight” because that data was based on window wall units and heat exchangers, and it “would be influenced by differences in product mix and changes in product mix over time,” it said.
And the ITC examined other “anecdotal” evidence provided by the petitioners, finding that it didn’t actually show significant underselling or pricing pressure on the part of the imports, it said. It agreed that one exhibit seemed to support the petitioners’ allegations, but said that, “as a whole,” the exhibits didn’t show a pattern.
It denied that it had discounted certain exhibits as being “collected for the purposes of these investigations.” Rather, it said, it discounted documents that weren’t contemporaneous or were submitted in support of allegations of underselling that would have had to occur after the period of investigation.
Further, although it acknowledged that its final determination was based on pricing data with “relatively limited coverage,” it said this was inevitable because extrusions represent a large category of goods. It said the products it chose as representing subject merchandise had been affirmed by the petitioners in the early stage of the proceeding, and that they are contesting the commission’s choices now only because “the pricing data collected in the final phase do not support their preferred outcome.”
“Contrary to Plaintiff’s arguments, the Commission is not required to give dispositive weight to anecdotal evidence when pricing data cover a small portion of importers’ sales,” it said.
It also said that the Court of International Trade has affirmed decisions made on “relatively low data coverage” in the past, including in at least one, Nucor, in which the data accounted “for even lower shares of U.S. shipments.”
The commission’s decision to allow the unnamed importer to revise its pricing data also was reasonable, and “[t]he credibility of sources is largely a matter within the province of the Commission, as the trier of fact,” it said, citing the 2003 CIT case Al Tech Specialty Steel Corp. v. United States.