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U.S. Commerce Department to Impose Preliminary Duties on OCTG from China

11/06/2009 - The U.S. Department of Commerce preliminarily determines that oil country tubular goods from P.R. China are being sold or are likely to be sold in the United States at less than fair value, as provided in section 733 of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended.

The Department of Commerce has preliminarily determined that oil country tubular goods (OCTG) from P.R. China are being sold or are likely to be sold in the United States at less than fair value, as provided in section 733 of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended.

The estimated margins of sales at less than fair value ranged from 36.53% for most parties investigated up to a high of 99.14% for PRC-wide Entity. These amounts will be in addition to the duties that were announced in September.
 
The petition for this case was filed April 8, 2009 by Maverick Tube Corp., United States Steel Corp., TNK Ipsco, V&M Star, V&M Tubular Corp. of America, Wheatland Tube Corp., Evraz Rocky Mountain Steel, and the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial Service Workers International Union, AFL-CIO-CLC, concerning OCTG imports from P.R. China.
 
The Commerce Department initiated its investigation on April 28, and on June 10 the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) issued an affirmative preliminary determination for reasonable indication of injury due to OCTG imports from P.R. China. The period of investigation was October 1, 2008 through March 31, 2009, which corresponds to the two most recent fiscal quarters prior to April 2009, the month in which the petition was filed.
 
Pursuant to requests from interested parties, final determination is being postponed and the provisional measures will be extended from the four month period to not more than six months.
 
The Government of P.R. China has filed a submission to the Department of Commerce alleging that the Department cannot lawfully apply its non-market economy (NME) antidumping methodology to P.R. China in the less-than-fair-value investigation of OCTG, while simultaneously applying countervailing duty law to P.R. China in the parallel countervailing duty OCTG investigation.
 
The Department disagrees with this claim, and preliminarily determines that it will continue to follow its practice in several recent less-than-fair-value investigations of merchandise from China by applying non-market economy provisions of the Act in accordance with the terms of those provisions, while concurrently conducting the countervailing duty investigation of the same merchandise in accordance with the relevant terms of the Act.
 
The Department of Commerce will make its final determination no later than 135 days after publication of the preliminary determination.