Duties from 2010 on a class of Chinese steel pipe go into a third five-year review this week, and the notice records both earlier reviews as expedited

Two antidumping and countervailing duty orders on Chinese steel pipe turn sixteen in November, and neither has yet faced a full review.

The United States International Trade Commission institutes its third five-year reviews of them on Monday, in a notice filed for public inspection on Friday morning. Commerce issued the orders on 10 November 2010. They were continued once effective 16 March 2016 and again effective 14 September 2021, and the question is the one section 751(c) of the Tariff Act of 1930 always asks: whether revoking them would be likely to lead to continuation or recurrence of material injury to the domestic industry within a reasonably foreseeable time.

The product is narrow and precisely drawn. A single domestic like product, coextensive with Commerce's scope, consisting of all carbon and alloy steel standard, line, and pressure pipe of 16 inches or less in outside diameter that is made without a welded seam, and a single domestic industry consisting of everybody in the United States who makes it.

The word that appears twice

Both of those definitions carry the same qualifier. The Commission describes them as reached "in its original determinations and its expedited first and second five-year review determinations", and it uses the phrase once for the product and once for the industry.

Expedited is not a scheduling convenience. The notice explains the fork a few lines above: the Commission assesses the adequacy of interested party responses to the notice of institution and decides on that basis whether to run full or expedited reviews, and a determination in an expedited review rests on the facts available, which may include only what came back in response to the notice. Twice now, that is the record on which duties from 2010 were carried forward another five years.

The calendar

Responses are due at 5:15 p.m. on 2 September. Comments on whether those responses were adequate are due at 5:15 p.m. on 16 October, and they may be filed only by parties eligible under the Commission's rule 207.62(b)(1). Two other clocks run earlier and are easy to miss, because both are set 21 days after publication rather than from a fixed date: an entry of appearance, and any application for access to business proprietary information under the administrative protective order.

Non-response has a stated price. A party that cannot furnish what is asked must notify the Commission at the earliest possible time with a full explanation, and where it does not, or the explanation is found inadequate, and the response is incomplete, the Commission may draw an adverse inference against that party under 19 U.S.C. 1677e(b).

Filing is electronic only, through EDIS, with no paper accepted until further notice. The Commission estimates the burden at 15 hours per response and publishes a worksheet respondents may complete and attach. The contact named on the notice is Stamen Borisson, in the Office of Investigations.