As the result of an appeal by the Petitioners in the carbon steel wire rod investigations, the US Court of International Trade (CIT) ordered the US International Trade Commission (ITC) to reconsider its negative preliminary determinations in the cases involving Egypt, South Africa and Venezuela. On July 19th, the ITC reversed its original determinations, and it has now made affirmative preliminary findings regarding imports from these three countries. In order to be included in an investigation, an individual country must import more than 3% of total imports or, if aggregated, those countries under 3% must total 7% or more of total imports. The ITC had originally determined that imports from Egypt, South Africa and Venezuela were negligible (under 3% of total imports) and terminated these investigations in October 2001. Shortly before the ITC's determination, the Petitioners tried to change the scope of these investigations by excluding 1080 tire cord and tire bead quality wire rod. By doing so, the Petitioners expected that level of imports of subject wire rod from Germany - which the ITC found to be 3.1% of total imports - would decrease, causing Germany to fall below the 3% negligibility threshold for individual countries. Since the ITC found that the aggregated total of imports from these three countries was 6.1% of all imports, the addition of Germany would result in the aggregated total of the four countries exceeding the 7% threshold. Both the AWPA and the Egyptian and Venezuelan respondents opposed the Petitioner's import statistics, and the ITC declined to adjust the import figures from Germany. Consequently, the ITC made a preliminary finding that imports from Egypt, South Africa and Venezuela were negligible, and these investigations were terminated. The Petitioners appealed the ITC's negative preliminary determinations, and the Court ruled that the ITC must reconsider its preliminary determinations. First, the CIT found that the US Commerce Department had subsequently changed the scope of the investigations to exclude 1080 tire cord and tire bead quality wire rod. Second, the CIT noted that the ITC "must defer to Commerce's definition of the scope of investigation." Finally, the CIT ordered the ITC to complete its reconsideration and report the results by August 2. On July 3, the ITC reopened the record of these investigations to include the changes in scope that the Petitioners had requested in October 2001. The ITC staff also collected import data corresponding to the modified scope of the investigation. In comments accompanying the amended import data, the ITC stated that "imports from Egypt, Germany, South Africa and Venezuela were each less than 3% of total US imports based on the revised scope language." However, the ITC did not disclose the amounts of grade 1080 imports from the countries that supplied these products because it considers this information to be confidential. For this reason, the ITC did not disclose the percentage of aggregated imports from Egypt, Germany, South Africa and Venezuela. The AWPA and counsel for the Egyptian, German and Venezuelan producers submitted comments in support of the ITC's original negligibility determinations. Despite our arguments, however, the Commissioners voted unanimously to reverse their original negligibility determinations, and it has now made preliminary affirmative injury determinations for these three countries. The ITC must submitted these results to the CIT by August 2, and the parties to the appeal (i.e., the Petitioners, and the Egyptian and Venezuelan producers) have until August 12 to submit comments on the reverse decision. Following receipt of comments from all parties, the Court of International Trade will most likely issue a final order, affirming the ITC's affirmative injury determinations. The Egyptian and Venezuelan producers will have the right to appeal the CIT's decision to the US Court of Appeals. An appeal normally takes a year or more to complete. In the event that there is no appeal, affirmative preliminary injury determinations regarding Egypt, South Africa and Venezuela would mean that the US Commerce Department would initiate antidumping investigations to determine preliminary dumping margins. These investigations would proceed independently of the ongoing antidumping and countervailing duty cases.
 American Wire Producers Association |
