CIT OKs Quarterly Cost Analysis in AD Review on Italian Steel Plate
The Court of International Trade on Sept. 3 sustained the Commerce Department's application of its quarterly cost methodology to analyze exporter Officine Tecnosider's sales during the 2020-21 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on steel plate from Italy. Judge Claire Kelly said Commerce adequately explained its approach, which stemmed from difficulties using Tecnosider's U.S. sales to analyze correlations between sales and costs of production, and why it "produces reasonable and reliable results."
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The agency decided to go with the alternative method for calculating costs, based on quarterly data, after conducting its two-step test on whether to buck the standard annual weighted-average cost methodology. The second step of the test looks at whether there were linkages between the cost of production and the sales price.
Commerce's use of the alternative method slashed the exporter's AD rate from 20.44% to zero percent (see 2309120010). Ordinarily, in the second step of this test, the agency examines two pools of the five largest sales volume control numbers (CONNUMs) in the home market and the five largest sales volume CONNUMs in the U.S. market to identify correlations between changing costs and sales cost from quarter to quarter.
However, Tecnosider's U.S. sales were made of only five CONNUMs, all of which occurred in the same quarter, making it impossible to perform the linkage analysis for the U.S. sales CONNUMs. The agency didn't conduct a linkage analysis for the U.S. sales but said it could still find a reasonable linkage between changes in home market sales prices and changes in the cost of production.
Judge Stephen Vaden remanded the use of this approach for failure to explain why focusing just on Italian sales is a reliable indicator of linkage for U.S. sales (see 2409170068). On remand, the agency analyzed five more home market CONNUMs to "account for the atypical data set," continuing to find that its use of the quarterly cost methodology is appropriate.
While the case was on remand, Vaden resigned from the court and the case was assigned to Kelly.
Kelly said it's "beyond dispute that data from a singular quarter would not allow Commerce to analyze changes from quarter to quarter as there would be no other U.S. sales data to be used as a comparator." While petitioner Nucor Corp. said the agency has "completely disregarded the relevance" of Tecnosider's U.S. sales data to the linkage analysis, Commerce said it didn't ignore the U.S. sales data but found it doesn't allow for a linkage analysis over the review period, "while the home market data allows for a linkage analysis and overwhelmingly shows that Plaintiff’s costs and prices are linked."
The judge also commended the agency for expanding the number of home market CONNUMs subject to the analysis to "ensure the reliability" of the methodology. Kelly said it's "reasonably discernible" that Commerce both increased the volume of home market sales to "compensate for the unavailability of U.S. data to analyze" and "sought further confirmation of its insights based on a larger amount of home market sales alone."
(Officine Tecnosider v. United States, Slip Op. 25-116, CIT # 23-00001, dated 09/03/25; Judge: Claire Kelly; Attorneys: Daniel Cannistra of Crowell & Moring for plaintiff Officine Tecnosider; Augustus Golden for defendant U.S. government; Stephanie Bell of Wiley Rein for defendant-intervenor Nucor Corp.)