Will Nucor Fastener Try Again?

12/19/2011 6:05:00 PM
NEWS BRIEFS

The U.S. International Trade Commission reaffirmed its original dismissal of the Nucor Fastener antidumping case back in 2009.

“This is a re-affirmation of a decision made two years ago, in which the commission looked at the data and found there was no merit to the case,” importer lead counsel Matthew McGrath told GlobalFastenerNews.com.

The ruling is a setback for domestic fastener manufacturers, whose hopes were raised when an appeals court remanded the case in September for a re-determination by the ITC.

The decision now returns to the U.S. Court of International Trade, which must determine whether the ITC met the requirements of the remand handed down by Judge Evan J. Wallach, who has since been appointed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The CIT judge who inherits the case must sign off on the ITC’s verdict before Nucor Fastener’s appeal can be considered settled under law.

“Wow. I guess the message has been sent,” one fastener veteran posted on Twitter after reports of the redetermination were first published by Fully Threaded Radio.

But the question remains: will Nucor Fastener continue to pursue tariffs on certain fasteners imported from China and Taiwan?

“They’ve had multiple bites at the apple, and hopefully now it’s time to put this case to rest,” McGrath said during a phone interview from his office in Washington DC.

Much of the industry was stunned when Judge Wallach remanded the case back to the ITC, and McGrath expressed hope that the latest determination signals an end to Nucor Fastener’s petition.

“The marketplace doesn’t need this shadow of uncertainty hanging over it,” he told GlobalFastenerNews.com.

But Nucor Fastener still has options. The Indiana-based fastener manufacturer could appeal the case to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In remanding the case back to the ITC, Wallach cited flaws in the methodology that led to a unanimous dismissal of Nucor Fastener’s petition seeking tariffs on fasteners from China and Taiwan.

In a 31-page ruling, Wallach sent the case back to the ITC for a redetermination on two “holdings”: first, that the ITC improperly treated its import data as “comprehensive”; and that the ITC failed to identify a “rational basis for unqualified reliance on (unnamed domestic producer’s) questionnaire response.

In its petitions, filed in September 2009, Nucor Fastener alleged average dumping margins of 145% for Chinese imports, and 74% for imports from Taiwan.