Appellants Overly Rely on Trade Usage to Seek Exclusion of Pipe Fittings From AD Order, US Tells CAFC
Appellants Sigma Corp. and Smith-Cooper International rely too much on industry jargon to argue Vandewater International's steel branch outlets are not butt-welded and aren't subject to the antidumping duty order on butt-weld pipe fittings from China, the U.S. argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The government said that "a wide array of record evidence contradicts" Sigma and SCI's "core" claim that the term "butt-weld" has a single, unambiguous meaning excluding welded outlets from the scope (Vandewater International v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1093).
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While Sigma and SCI claim that the scope unambiguously excludes Vandewater's products, the description of "butt-weld pipe fittings" is ambiguous since "butt-weld" doesn't have a plain meaning in the scope nor after considering trade usage of the term, the U.S. said.
Sigma and SCI said industry standards require butt-weld pipe fittings to have end-to-end connections on the same plane as opposed to when the contoured end of a steel branch outlet is welded perpendicular to the center of a pipe, as is the case with Vandewater's steel branch outlets.
But the scope in the AD order does not refer to industry standards or an end-to-end requirement, the government countered, adding that its scope ruling and final (k)(2) analysis shows the products fall under the AD order. While Sigma and SCI claim that Commerce did not analyze the term "butt-weld" in isolation, Commerce was not required to do so, the brief said. Even as Vandewater acknowledged in the scope request, the scope language does not define the physical characteristics of a "butt-weld pipe fitting," so further analysis was required.
Sigma and SCI's claims that the trade usage of the term "butt-weld" requires the goods to be excluded "lack merit because, on the one hand, they take the trade usage concept too far by attempting to use contested factual materials that are properly part of a (k)(2) analysis to interpret undefined terms in the order as a matter of law, and on the other ... do not establish a lack of ambiguity." The Federal Circuit's decision in ArcelorMittal v. U.S. said that "consideration of industry jargon is not the same as conducting a full-fledged analysis" of the (k)(2) factors, which Sigma and SCI are attempting to do here, the government said.
The U.S. added that Sigma and SCI "ignore other trade usage evidence that contradicts their claim," including SCI's own admission that it referred to its own goods as "butt-weld outlets" and that Commerce has nearly identical outlets as butt-weld pipe fittings under the Taiwan order.