SEOUL, April 13 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. Commerce Department has slapped South Korean steelmaker NEXTEEL Co. with a 75.81 percent antidumping duty in a blow to the Asian country's steel industry.

Washington said NEXTEEL withheld necessary information and failed to cooperate to the best of its ability in responding to the Commerce Department's requests for information on its export of oil country tubular goods (OCTG) to the United States.

"We find that the application of adverse facts available ... is warranted with respect to NEXTEEL for these final results," the department said in a memorandum on the final results of a 2015-2016 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on South Korean OCTG.

The department also said it assigned to SeAH Steel Corp. and other South Korean steel producers a 6.75 percent weighted-average dumping margin.

The Department of Commerce said South Korean steel producers have been unfairly dumping OCTG in the U.S. market, hurting American workers and businesses.

OCTG is a product used primarily by the oil and gas industries in drilling and extraction operations for lining the casing of oil wells as well as for the tubing that delivers oil and gas to the surface.

The department said the dumping margins -- the rate at which the imported materials were sold below fair value in the United States -- were found to range from 2.76 percent to 24.92 percent.

"There is fair and unfair trade, and the distinction is not very hard to make," Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in comments posted on the department's website. "We will not stand for the distortions in foreign markets being used against U.S. businesses."