The Government of India and exporter Balkrishna Industries replied to petitioner Titan Tire Corp.'s arguments against the Commerce Department's finding that Balkrishna didn't use or benefit from India's Advanced Authorization Scheme in the 2021 countervailing duty review on new pneumatic off-the-road tires from India. The Indian government said neither Commerce nor the petitioner had reason to doubt the fact that Balkrishna hadn't benefited from the program, while Balkrishna argued that the Indian government properly verified the information at issue (Titan Tire Corp. v. United States, CIT # 23-00233).
Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves again remanded the results of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty review of Chinese-origin multilayered wood flooring. Choe-Groves questioned whether the department’s decisions during the review were “results-driven or cherry-picking” because the department, instead of reopening the record to correct erroneous surrogate value information, still insisted on simply removing a month of bad data -- resulting in a surrogate value inflation of 453% (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00190).
The Court of International Trade on Feb. 18 sustained the Commerce Department's second remand results in a case on the antidumping duty investigation on mattresses from Indonesia. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves upheld the agency's exclusion of in-transit mattresses from Indonesia in calculating constructed export price. The judge also upheld the agency's exclusion of respondent PT. Zinus Global Indonesia's parent company's selling expenses from the calculation of normal value (PT. Zinus Global Indonesia v. United States, CIT Consol. # 21-00277).
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Feb. 14 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Feb. 13 issued its mandate in an antidumping duty case after ruling that the Commerce Department must establish a "particularly strong need to deter noncompliance" when setting adverse facts available rates that drastically differ from accuracy margins (see 2501070084). The appellate court rejected a 154.33% AD rate for steel nail exporter Oman Fasteners, which was set after the company missed a filing deadline by 16 minutes. The appellate court said Commerce should only look to impose massive AFA rates based on a record of unreasonable negligence or international misconduct (Oman Fasteners v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1661).
The Commerce Department adequately determined an exporter’s single sale during a new shipper review’s period of review was bona fide, the U.S. said Feb. 12 (Catfish Farmers of America v. U.S., CIT # 24-00126).
The Court of International Trade said in a text-only order that it "intends to consolidate" the nine cases challenging the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on aluminum extrusions from China and the nine cases challenging the countervailing duty investigation on the same product if no party objects by Feb. 19. All cases were assigned to Judge Mark Barnett last week. The judge said he set the Feb. 19 date so that only one administrative record needed to be filed in the consolidated action.
U.S. seafood seller Luscious Seafood pushed back against a petitioner’s argument that it wasn’t a wholesaler of domestic like product for an administrative review of an antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam, saying it faced “higher hurdles” in proving its status than a similarly positioned party (Luscious Seafood v. United States, CIT # 24-00069).
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Feb. 13 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The U.S. on Feb. 11 filed a motion to strike as misleading a chemical manufacturer’s recent citation of a CBP letter, saying it was “a decision from a separate proceeding, issued by a separate agency” that had been brought up without sufficient prior notice (Cambridge Isotope Laboratories v. United States, CIT # 23-00080).