The Court of International Trade, in an April 4 opinion made public April 12, sustained parts and sent back parts of the Commerce Department's final results in the 2017-2018 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on solar cells from China. Judge Claire Kelly upheld Commerce's pick of Malaysia as the primary surrogate country and the calculation of surrogate financial ratios. However, the judge remanded Commerce's decision to value silver paste using Malaysian import data, value mandatory respondent Risen Energy Co.'s ethyl vinyl acetate and backsheet, and use partial adverse facts available to value missing factor of production data, as well as the conduct of its separate rate calculation.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department's decision to reject part of antidumping duty respondent Ajmal Steel Tubes & Pipes' submissions for being nearly two hours late due to COVID-19-related technical difficulties constitutes an abuse of discretion, the respondent said in an April 8 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade. The motion said the technical difficulties were an "extraordinary circumstance," and acceptance of the late filing would have been inconsequential to Commerce's ability to timely conduct the investigation. The consequences for the rejection of the filing are grossly disproportionate to the error made, it said (Ajmal Steel Tubes & Pipes Ind. v. U.S., CIT #21-00587).
Importer Shamrock Building Materials moved April 11 to throw out the testimony of a witness in a customs classification dispute, telling the Court of International Trade that the witness, Athanasios Meliopoulos, is "woefully incompetent." The plaintiff said that Meliopoulos isn't qualified to render an opinion on the only relevant question of the case -- whether the imported electrical conduit tubing is lined with insulating materials (Shamrock Building Materials v. United States, CIT #20-00074).
The Commerce Department's conclusion that Dominican manufacturer Kingtom Aluminio had exports subject to the antidumping duty order on aluminum extrusions from China based on CBP's Enforce and Protect Act investigation is an "abdication of its legal responsibility" to conduct administrative reviews, Kingtom said in an April 8 complaint. Taking its grievance to the Court of International Trade, Kingtom also said that the decision to find that the exporter had goods subject to the AD order based on adverse facts available is a due process violation (Kingtom Aluminio v. U.S., CIT #22-00072 to -00079).
Importer Acquisition 362, doing business as Strategic Import Supply, had to file a protest to properly establish jurisdiction to challenge the liquidation of its entries, DOJ argued in an April 8 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Responding to SIS's arguments that there was nothing to protest at the time since the countervailing duty rate was not final, DOJ said that this position is incorrect since the importer should have moved to suspend liquidation during the CVD review. Failing to do so precluded the ability to judicially challenge the liquidations, the brief said (Acquisition 362, LLC dba Strategic Import Supply v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1161).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department found on remand that antidumping duty respondent Power Steel Co. did not pay Section 232 duties on two entries of steel concrete rebar, dropping the duties paid as part of the exporter's sales price used to establish its base export price in an antidumping duty administrative review. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on April 8, Commerce lowered Power Steel's dumping margin from 3.27% to 0.01%, locking in a finding that Power Steel did not make sales at less than normal value (Power Steel Co., Ltd. v. United States, CIT #20-03771).
The Commerce Department granted a level-of-trade (LOT) adjustment for antidumping duty respondent Productos Laminados de Monterrey (Prolamsa) on remand at the Court of International Trade, reversing course from its previous position. Finding that the totality of evidence supports the position that Prolamsa made sales at two levels of trade, Commerce dropped Prolamsa's dumping rate from 7.47% to 0.89% (Productos Laminados de Monterrey S.A. de C.V. v. U.S., CIT #20-00166).
Three judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit probed the question of whether a group of U.S. steel companies, led by U.S. Steel Corp., could intervene in a spate of cases challenging the Commerce Department's decision to deny certain importers exclusions to Section 232 steel and aluminum duties. During an April 7 oral argument, Chief Judge Kimberly Moore and Judges Pauline Newman and Todd Hughes expressed serious doubt as to whether the steel companies could join the exclusion challenges (California Steel Industries v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-2172).