The Court of International Trade should refuse to consolidate a challenge to the International Trade Commission's affirmative injury finding on hot-rolled steel flat products from Australia with a challenge to the commission's negative injury determination on the same goods from Brazil, the U.S. argued. The government claimed that there are no overlapping issues in the proceedings and that "consolidation would complicate briefing as well as the Court's review of the determinations." The Australia and Brazil cases challenge different determinations, so the present dispute is not the same as respondents and petitioners making opposing arguments on the same Commerce Department dumping margin, the U.S. said. The government was joined in its opposition to consolidation by U.S. steel companies Cleveland-Cliffs, Nucor Corp., Steel Dynamics, SSAB Enterprises and U.S. Steel Corp. (BlueScope Steel v. United States, CIT # 22-00353).
The Commerce Department reasonably declined to investigate alleged off-peak sales of electricity and correctly decided not to treat an affiliate as a cross-owned input supplier in a countervailing duty investigation on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from South Korea, DOJ argued April 24 at the Court of International Trade (Nucor v. U.S., CIT # 21-00182).
Commerce's adjustment to the total manufacturing cost and scrap offsets in an antidumping duty administrative review on steel pipes and tubes from Korea cannot be argued at the Court of International Trade, defendant-intervenor Nucor Tubular Products said in an April 24 motion to dismiss two claims in HiSteel's complaint. Nucor argued that even if HiSteel is correct, the alleged calculation errors could not have affected the dumping margin, and so HiSteel has failed to allege any actual injury and the claims are not subject to the court's jurisdiction (HiSteel Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00142).
The Court of International Trade in a confidential opinion upheld CBP's determination of non-evasion made on remand in a case over the Enforce and Protect Act investigation on frozen warmwater shrimp from India. Judge Claire Kelly gave the parties until May 3 to review the opinion's confidential information. The trade court previously remanded the non-evasion finding due to CBP's failure to provide adequate public summaries of the confidential information in the proceeding. On remand, CBP said it received adequate public summaries from all the parties for all the confidential data (see 2211220055) (Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Enforcement Committee v. U.S., CIT # 21-00129).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department legally relied on respondents Allied Natural Product's and Ambrosia Natural Products (India)'s raw honey acquisition costs as a proxy to calculate cost of production in the antidumping duty investigation into raw honey from India, the respondents argued in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Issuing the brief as a supplement to the government's claims, Allied and Ambrosia added that, contrary to petitioner American Honey Producers Association's claims, Commerce did not use the beekepeers' and "middlemen" suppliers' costs as "benchmarks" for setting the cost of honey (American Honey Producers Association v. U.S., CIT # 22-00195).
The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's use of total facts otherwise available with an adverse inference on remand in an antidumping duty case concerning wooden cabinets and vanities from China, according to an April 24 opinion. Judge Miller Baker upheld Commerce's use of AFA and its selection of the 262.18% China-wide rate for Dalian Meisen.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department correctly chose surrogate data in an antidumping duty administrative review on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam, DOJ said in an April 20 response brief at the Court of International Trade. DOJ asked the court to sustain the final results of the AD review, saying that the various challenges to the country selection, separate rate and use of adverse facts available should be rejected (Green Farms Seafood Joint Stock Company v. U.S., CIT # 22-00092).
Appellants Sigma Corp. and Smith-Cooper International rely too much on industry jargon to argue Vandewater International's steel branch outlets are not butt-welded and aren't subject to the antidumping duty order on butt-weld pipe fittings from China, the U.S. argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The government said that "a wide array of record evidence contradicts" Sigma and SCI's "core" claim that the term "butt-weld" has a single, unambiguous meaning excluding welded outlets from the scope (Vandewater International v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1093).