The Department of Commerce has preliminarily determined that certain oil country tubular goods, the steel pipe used in oil and gas wells, from the United Arab Emirates are being or are likely to be sold in the United States at less than fair value. The notice, published in the Federal Register and applicable November 4, covers an investigation period of April 1, 2025 through March 31, 2026 and invites interested parties to comment.
The case is one of three opened together in April 2026, alongside Austria and Taiwan, and its preliminary determination was postponed in August before issuing now. Commerce also preliminarily treats two UAE respondents, Universal Tube and Pipe Industries FZE and THL Pipe and Tube Industries LLC, as a single entity for the calculation, a ruling that determines whose sales data set the rates applied to other exporters.
Oil country tubular goods are a recurring trade remedy battleground because drilling demand is cyclical and import competition is direct: Commerce imposed antidumping orders on the same product from Argentina, Mexico and Russia in 2022. A preliminary affirmative finding in the US system is the point at which suspension of liquidation and cash deposits normally follow, raising the landed cost of the covered imports before any final order.
Status: preliminary, not final. The estimated margins themselves are in Commerce’s preliminary decision memorandum rather than the notice text and are not stated here. Still to come are comments, a final determination, and a separate injury decision by the International Trade Commission, all of which must be affirmative before an antidumping duty order issues.