The Commerce Department in a pair of remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade stuck by its position to exclude importers Worldwide Door Components' and Columbia Aluminum Products' door thresholds from the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China. After the trade court remanded the case for a second time, finding that the previous remand results were not submitted in a form the trade court could sustain, Commerce offered a further explanation for its decision to find that the thresholds fit under the finished merchandise exclusion to the orders (Worldwide Door Components v. U.S., CIT #19-00012) (Columbia Aluminum Products v. U.S., CIT #19-00013).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 7 order granted the U.S.'s partial consent motion for a voluntary remand in an Enforce and Protect Act matter brought by H&E Home and Classic Metals Suppliers, later joined by Global Aluminum as a consolidated plaintiff. The case is related to CBP's finding that the plaintiffs were evading the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions by transshipping them through the Dominican Republic (H&E Home v. U.S., CIT #21-00337).
The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 7 paperless order instructed the plaintiff, Environment One, in a case over a denied Section 301 exclusion request to file a supplemental brief over whether a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision is relevant to the current action (Environment One Corporation v. United States, CIT #22-00124).
The Commerce Department properly included Vandewater International's steel branch outlets under the scope of the antidumping duty order on carbon steel butt-weld pipe fittings from China, the Court of International Trade held in a Sept. 8 opinion. Judge Leo Gordon found that while the plaintiffs, led by Vandewater, showed that information on the record could back a finding that their outlets could be excluded from the scope of the order, he could not agree that Commerce acted unreasonably in reaching the opposing conclusion using each of the (k)(2) factors.
A group of domestic steel manufacturers doesn't have the right to intervene in a spate of challenges to denied requests for exclusions from Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a Sept. 8 opinion. Ruling against the Court of International Trade's opinion that the would-be intervenors did not establish standing, Judges Kimberly Moore and Todd Hughes ultimately found that the interveners nevertheless failed to identify a legally protectable interest to qualify as intervenors under the trade court's rules.
International trade attorney Brian McGrath left the employment of Crowell & Moring, the firm confirmed in a notice of withdrawal filed at the Court of International Trade. McGrath will head to work at Google after departing Crowell, where he will do export controls and sanctions work for the tech giant, John Brew, partner at Crowell, told Trade Law Daily. McGrath began working at Crowell in 2018, serving as an associate in the International Trade Group, focusing on compliance with U.S. sanctions, export controls and anti-boycott regimes, the firm said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit changed the label on a key antidumping duty decision from "nonprecedential" to "precedential." The decision stated that the Commerce Department cannot select just one mandatory respondent in an antidumping duty review where multiple exporters have requested a review (see 2208290026). The appellate court said that Commerce's interpretation of the statute finding that it can use only one respondent runs "contrary to the statute's unambiguous language." The judges ruled the agency has not shown it to be otherwise reasonable to calculate the all-others rate based on only one respondent and said the directive to find a weighted average gives no reason that it's reasonable to use only a single rate. The decision was originally listed as "nonprecedential," but the court later reversed that (YC Rubber Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1489).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department properly stuck by its decision to issue questionnaires in lieu of on-site verification due to the COVID-19-related travel restrictions on remand at the Court of International, the agency argued in a Sept. 6 brief filed to the Court of International Trade. During the remand, Commerce took a new agency action by finding that the questionnaire responses constituted verification -- a move it says was not only legal but justified since the antidumping duty respondent, Shakti Forge Industries, gave an amount of information that typically exceeds that found in other investigations, and the information corroborated and verified information that Shakti previously submitted (Bonney Forge Corporation v. United States, CIT #20-03837).