A lawsuit by Home Depot USA over the president's authority to expand Section 232 national security tariffs beyond procedural deadlines filed at the Court of International Trade was assigned to a three-judge panel, in a Feb. 2 order. The judges -- Timothy Stanceu, Jennifer Choe-Groves and M. Miller Baker -- ruled on the original April 2021 decision to strike down the expansion of the Section 232 tariffs onto steel and aluminum "derivatives" (see 2104050049). (Home Depot USA v. United States, CIT #22-00014).
Thirteen U.S. states, along with Washington, D.C., two Latin American and Caribbean nations and a host of gun violence prevention organizations moved to appear as amici curiae to support the Mexican government's lawsuit against gun manufacturers, which alleges that they fueled violence in Mexico through illegal firearms sales practices (Estados Unidos Mexicanos v. Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc., et al., D.C. Mass. #21-11269).
The Court of International Trade upheld for the second time the Commerce Department's decision that no benefit was conferred to South Korean steel companies through the provision of electricity. In a decision written on Jan. 21 but made public on Feb. 1, Judge Mark Barnett sustained Commerce's decision after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remanded it for unlawfully relying on price discrimination instead of a thorough fair-market principles evaluation. Barnett said Commerce has now addressed the Federal Circuit's concerns.
The Court of International Trade granted the Commerce Department's request to re-review its decision to deny 15 exclusion requests from Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, in a Feb. 1 order. Plaintiff NLMK Pennsylvania had consented to the request, even though Commerce's offer only covered 15 of the 54 total exclusion denial challenges made by NLMK. In its order, CIT did shorten the amount of time Commerce has to review the 15 cases from 150 days, as requested by the agency, to 106 days.
BGI Group, doing business as U.S. Cabinet Depot, evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on wooden cabinets and vanities from China, CBP said in a Jan. 27 Enforce and Protect Act determination. BGI evaded the orders by misrepresenting the country of origin of its entries as Vietnam, the agency said. While BGI maintained that its Vietnamese supplier, HOCA Vietnam, further processed components from China, CBP said that the orders' scope language still includes such products.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department reasonably found that antidumping respondents Aelous Tyre and Guizhou Tyre Co. were de facto controlled by the Chinese government, the Department of Justice said in a Jan. 24 reply brief submitted at the Court of International Trade. Aeolus and GTC argued that in cases where the Chinese government is found to only own a minority of a company, Commerce cannot just rely on only one fact of the de facto control analysis. DOJ countered by saying that the plaintiffs mischaracterize Commerce' separate rate evaluations and that all factors were considered in establishing that the pair failed to rebut the presumption of government control (Guizhou Tyre Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. #17-00100).
OCP North America, the U.S. subsidiary of a Moroccan fertilizer exporter, penned a letter to U.S. farmers urging their support of the company's court case against the countervailing duty order on phosphate fertilizer from Morocco. The letter, sent through public relations firm Cogent Strategies, linked to a website also established by Cogent to serve as a platform for farmers to express their dissatisfaction with the order. The case the letter references is at the Court of International Trade and is challenging the International Trade Commission's injury determination that led to the imposition of the CVD order.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Antidumping duty respondent Goodluck India Limited filed a complaint at the Court of International Trade to contest the Commerce Department's assessment of antidumping duties on its entries since they were not subject to the ADD order at the time, the company said. Goodluck participated in the antidumping duty investigation into cold-drawn mechanical tubing of carbon and alloy steel from India in which it was assigned a 33.7% cash deposit rate. The respondent then challenged this decision at CIT, which eventually overturned Commerce, affirming a final zero percent margin for Goodluck. The result was Commerce revoking the ADD order for Goodluck (Goodluck India Limited v. United States, CIT #22-00024).