CIT Sustains Commerce's Circumvention Finding of Oil Piping From Brunei, Philippines

The Court of International Trade on Jan. 23 sustained the Commerce Department's finding that oil piping from Brunei and the Philippines circumvented the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on oil country tubular goods from China. Judge M. Miller Baker relied on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's ruling in Al Ghurair Iron & Steel v. U.S. to reject claims from exporters HLDS (B) Steel and HLD Clark Steel Pipe against Commerce's comparison of their production of oil pipe in Brunei and the Philippines to the production of hot-rolled steel, an oil piping input, in China. The Federal Circuit already found that Commerce can make the comparison because the agency indicated what part of the total value of the goods subject to the inquiries is accounted for by the last step of processing and found that the level of investment is much greater for the production of hot-rolled steel than for oil piping, Baker noted.