Australian exporter BlueScope Steel and its U.S. affiliate challenged the Commerce Department's decision to not deduct discounts and rebates from the company's normal value when setting its antidumping duty rate in an administrative review, in a Sept. 28 complaint at the Court of International Trade. BlueScope said that this decision cut against the agency's regulations and was "premised on a wholly inaccurate understanding of the data that BlueScope submitted" (BlueScope Steel Ltd., et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00509).
The Commerce Department ditched its reliance on adverse facts available for respondent Hyundai Steel in remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade in a challenge to an antidumping review on cold-rolled steel flat products from South Korea. After giving Hyundai an opportunity to explain a discrepancy between two product codes, the agency accepted the explanation and thus dropped its adverse facts available finding. Commerce also rescinded its decision to apply the all-others rate to one of Hyundai's affiliated freight companies, dubbed "Company A" (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 19-00099).
Knit gloves with a plastic coating on the palm and on the front and sides of the fingers are classifiable as textile gloves of heading 6116, not articles of plastic of heading 3926, the Department of Justice said in a brief filed Sept. 17 with the Court of International Trade. The gloves are entirely described by the terms of heading 6116, and as such can’t be classified in the residual subheading for plastics, DOJ said (Magid Glove & Safety Manufacturing Co. v. U.S., CIT # 16-00150).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade ruled once again Sept. 27 that the Commerce Department cannot make a particular market situation adjustment to the cost of production for the sales-below-cost test when calculating normal value. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves remanded the case to Commerce, finding that nothing in the statute permits such an adjustment.
The Commerce Department's calculation of the separate rate in an antidumping duty review by averaging the separate rates from the previous four administrative reviews was backed by substantial evidence, the Court of International Trade said in a Sept. 27 order. After previously finding that Commerce's extension of the adverse facts available rate to the non-individually examined respondents was unlawful, the court then upheld the agency's new separate rate calculation methodology.
The Commerce Department's decision to pick Mexico over Malaysia as a surrogate country in an antidumping duty investigation on Chinese quartz surface products was properly supported, the Court of International Trade said in a Sept. 24 opinion. Judge Leo Gordon upheld the determination, finding that the plaintiff, mandatory respondent Foshan Yixin Stone Company Limited, needed to prove that Malaysia was "the one and only reasonable surrogate country selection" -- something it failed to do.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied steel importer Transpacific Steel's motion for a full court rehearing of a panel decision to uphold President Donald Trump's Section 232 tariff hike on Turkish steel, in a Sept. 24 order. Transpacifc, along with several Turkish steel makers, moved for the panel rehearing and rehearing en banc, arguing that the panel's majority failed to impose the congressionally mandated limitations to the president's power in Section 232. Also, the petition argued that the majority improperly rejected the plaintiff appellees' equal protection claims (see 2108250022) (Transpacific Steel LLC, et al. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #20-2157).
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's final results in an investigation into circumvention of the antidumping and countervailing duties on corrosion-resistant steel products from the China, in a Sept. 24 confidential order. The case was brought by Al Ghurair Iron & Steel, which was found to be circumventing the AD/CVD orders via the United Arab Emirates. In a letter to the litigants, Judge Timothy Reif requested that the parties review the opinion by Oct. 1 for any confidential information to be redacted (Al Ghurair Iron & Steel LLC v. United States, CIT #21-00142).
The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 24 order remanded for the fourth time the Commerce Department's attempt to set the all-others rate in an antidumping duty investigation by averaging a zero percent and an adverse facts available rate given to the two mandatory respondents. The court said Commerce has an obligation to assign dumping margins as accurately as possible, which it said the agency was not doing when it came up with the all-others rate without using any company's actual data.