The Court of International Trade in a June 15 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's final determination in the 2019 antidumping duty investigation on wood mouldings and millwork products from Brazil. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ruled that Commerce properly combined the three mandatory respondents -- Araupel, Braslumber Industria de Molduras and BrasPine Madeiras -- into a single entity and correctly didn't apply the major input rule to certain log purchases. Commerce was also right to revise Araupel's general and administrative expenses to account for fair value adjustments associated with the annual revaluation of standing trees in the company's unharvested forests, the court said. The result is a zero percent dumping margin for the collapsed entity.
CBP properly denied payouts of interest assessed after liquidation, known as delinquency interest, on collected antidumping and countervailing duties under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000, the Court of International Trade said in a series of five nearly identical opinions. Judge Timothy Stanceu ruled that it must rely on CBP's interpretation of how to administer the CDSOA and define how interest is earned on AD/CV duties given ambiguities in the statute pertaining to delinquency interest. The court also held that given that the interest is put into a single sum after liquidation, it loses its "individual character" and is no longer interest earned on the duties.
Angel Del Villar and Luca Scalisi, two California music business executives, were charged with conspiring to violate the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act by doing business with a concert promoter linked to Mexican drug cartels, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California announced June 14. The two face a statutory maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
By saying that membership in a Chinese labor union by some of the ownership of an antidumping duty respondent precludes it from proving the absence of de facto Chinese government control, the Commerce Department "radically" changed its separate rate analysis, exporter Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export Corp. (ZMC) said in a June 14 reply brief. Arguing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, ZMC said that the Commerce's new concept of potential government control created by this standard is "too abstract to be lawful" (Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2257).
The Court of International Trade in a June 15 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's decision to drop its particular market situation adjustment to antidumping duty respondent Hyundai Steel Corp.'s cost of production. However, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves sent back the agency's decision to continue making a PMS adjustment to the other mandatory respondent Husteel Co.'s normal value when calculating non-examined respondent SeAH Steel Corp.'s dumping margin.
The Commerce Department properly found that Shelter Forest International Acquisition's hardwood plywood exports didn't circumvent the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood from China, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a June 15 opinion. Affirming the Court of International Trade's opinion, the Federal Circuit said that the merchandise was commercially available before Dec. 8, 2016, and was thus not later-developed merchandise that circumvented the AD/CVD orders.
CBP no longer believes importers Global Aluminum Distributor and Hialeah Aluminum Supply evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China by transshipping them through Dominican manufacturer Kingtom Aluminio. Filing its remand results at the Court of International Trade in a case related to the Enforce and Protect Act investigation, CBP said that after taking another look at the record, it cannot conclude that evasion took place (Global Aluminum Distributor v. United States, CIT #21-00198).
The Commerce Department should obtain all ex parte communications from the White House involving President Joe Biden's recent decision to temporarily suspend antidumping and countervailing duties on solar cells from four Southeast Asian nations, U.S. solar company Auxin Solar said in a June 9 letter to Commerce. Suspecting that the White House made the decision after consulting with stakeholders, Auxin said that the law requires all ex parte communications to be placed on the record.
The Commerce Department erred by rejecting the Coalition of American Manufacturers of Mobile Access Equipment's surrogate data for ocean freight along with a host of inputs for mobile access equipment, the coalition said in a June 13 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The coalition argued that its own surrogate value data "more accurately reflected the inputs" used than the data Commerce did end up using (Coalition of American Manufacturers of Mobile Access Equipment v. United States, CIT #22-00152).