Jacob Kopnick

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The Commerce Department reasonably said importer Cambridge Isotope Laboratories' enriched isotope compounds fit under the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on ammonium sulfate from China, the government argued in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. The importer's 15N-enriched ammonium sulfate should have been included under the orders since the orders cover ammonium sulfate in all "physical forms," the government said (Cambridge Isotope Laboratories v. United States, CIT # 23-00080).

Congress didn't give the Commerce Department authority to deviate from certain principles associated with anti-circumvention proceedings whenever it thinks the effectiveness of an AD/CVD measure has been threatened "by changes in manufacturing methods or supply chains," Solar cell exporter BYD (H.K.) Co. argued. Filing a reply brief last week with the Court of International Trade, BYD said Congress laid out only a "very limited number of specific manufacturing scenarios" that can be deemed "circumvention" (BYD (H.K.) Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00221).

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 26 upheld the Commerce Department's finding that Germany's Konzessionsabgabenverordnung (KAV) program, which exempts from a fee gas and power pipeline companies that sell electricity below a certain price, isn't de facto specific and so isn't countervailable. Judge Claire Kelly approved Commerce's use of facts otherwise available to find "the recipients were too numerous to render" the program de facto specific.

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

Exporter Teh Fong Min (TFM) International Co. filed a brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last week adopting the government's defense of its decision to revoke the antidumping duty orders on stilbenic optical brightening agents from China and Taiwan after no interested domestic party filed a notice of intent to participate in sunset reviews on the orders (Archroma U.S. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-2159).

Antidumping duty and countervailing duty petitioners the U.S. Aluminum Extruders Coalition and United Steelworkers argued that the International Trade Commission incorrectly concluded that aluminum extrusions from China, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam didn't injure the U.S. industry (U.S. Aluminum Extruders Coalition v. United States, CIT # 24-00209).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Dec. 23 stayed a Texas court's order enjoining the enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act's (CTA's) beneficial ownership information reporting requirements. Judges Carl Stewart, Catharina Haynes and Stephen Higginson said the government is likely to succeed in defending the CTA's constitutionality given that the act's reporting requirements squarely fall within over a century of the U.S. Supreme Court's jurisprudence regarding Congress' power under the commerce clause, the court said (Texas Top Cop Shop v. Merrick Garland, 5th Cir. # 24-40792).

Tire exporter Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations filed a 10-count complaint at the Court of International Trade on Dec. 23, challenging the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available against the company in the antidumping duty investigation on truck and bus tires from Thailand (Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations v. United States, CIT # 24-00263).

President-elect Donald Trump announced his plans to nominate Court of International Trade Judge Stephen Vaden to be deputy secretary of agriculture. Vaden joined the court in 2020 after working in Trump's first administration as USDA's general counsel. Posting the announcement on Truth Social, the president-elect said that at the agency, Vaden "relocated and reorganized the Agencies that comprise the Department to better serve Rural America, and engaged in substantial regulatory reform."