The National Marine Fisheries Service illegally denied importer Southern Cross Seafood's application for preapproval to import Chilean sea bass, Southern Cross argued in an Oct. 12 complaint at the Court of International Trade. NMFS said it could not permit the imports given the lack of a Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources Convention (CAMLR) conservation measure for the area in the Atlantic Ocean north of Antarctica where the fish are harvested. Southern Cross argued that the Commission for the CAMLR does not prohibit fishing for the sea bass there in the absence of a conservation measure (Southern Cross Seafoods v. U.S., CIT #22-00299).

The Court of International Trade must dismiss a case accusing the importer and U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese manufacturing company, Wanxiang America Corp., of negligence by making false statements and omissions on its entries of wheel hub assemblies, radial ball and tapered roller bearings, and universal joints and their parts, WXA argued in an Oct. 12 motion.

The Commerce Department must reconsider or further explain its decision not to investigate off-peak electricity provided for less than adequate remuneration, the Court of International Trade held in an Oct. 5 opinion made public Oct.12. Judge Mark Barnett also sent back Commerce's failure to attribute subsidies to a respondent that had been given to the respondent's affiliate in connection with the purchase of steel scrap and a fixed asset. However, Barnett did uphold the agency's decision not to attribute the affiliate's subsidies in connection with the provision of services, raw materials and other fixed assets.

The Commerce Department decided to grant Universal Tube and Plastic Industries a level of trade adjustment in an antidumping duty review on remand at the Court of International Trade. Submitting its redetermination on Oct. 13, Commerce found Universal made its home market sales at two LOTs, though it continued to deny Universal a constructed export price offset. The result was a weighted-average dumping margin of 1.18% for Universal (Universal Tube and Plastic Indus. v. United States, CIT #20-03944).

The International Trade Commission should disqualify Daniel Pickard, chair of Buchanan Ingersoll's International Trade & National Security Practice Group, from participating as counsel for the petitioner to an International Trade Commission injury investigation given his ethical violations, counsel for Amstead Rail Co. said in an Oct. 11 letter.

The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 12 confidential opinion remanded the Commerce Department's final determination in the countervailing duty investigation on forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany. In a text-only order, Judge Claire Kelly ordered Commerce to reconsider its position that the KAV program -- a concession fee ordinance program for public transport routes -- is a specific subsidy, and its rate calculations for the Electricity Tax Act and the Energy Tax Act. Kelly, in a letter to litigants, gave parties to the case until Oct. 19 to review the confidential information in the opinion (BGH Edelstahl Siegen v. United States, CIT #21-00080).

The U.S. made it "crystal clear" that "no decision-maker could have reasonably" found that the U.S. industry made certain steel slabs in enough quantity to warrant rejecting steel company NLMK Pennsylvania's requests for Section 232 tariff exclusions, NLMK argued in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. DOJ argued that the Commerce Department's regulations on quality criterion exclude the consideration of slab size when determining if there's enough capacity to make the merchandise in question in the U.S. NLMK said that argument contradicts the language of the regulation itself and is "nonsense on its face" (NLMK Pennsylvania v. United States, CIT #21-00507).

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The Commerce Department in Oct. 7 remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade dropped its use of adverse facts available pertaining to the use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program for one respondent in a countervailing duty review but not the other mandatory respondent. Commerce found that JA Solar Co., provided enough data to fill gaps left by the Chinese government's failure to provide certain information to prove that its U.S. customers did not benefit from the EBCP while Risen Energy Co. did not (Risen Energy Co. v. United States, CIT #20-03912).

The International Trade Commission was wrong not to cumulate imports of cold-rolled steel flat products from Brazil with imports from China, India, Japan, South Korea and the U.K. in a five-year sunset review of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on the products, U.S. company Cleveland-Cliffs argued in an Oct. 5 complaint the Court of International Trade. The ITC further erred by focusing on the likely volume of the Brazilian imports in its cumulation analysis in the injury investigation, resulting in an "impermissible circular" injury analysis, the complaint said (Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. v. United States, CIT #22-00257).