The Commerce Department on Feb. 12 found on remand, and under protest, that a German subsidy was not de jure specific to an exporter of forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany (BGH Edelstahl Siegen v. U.S., CIT # 21-00080).
The Court of International Trade on Feb. 12 sustained the Commerce Department's use of facts available for antidumping duty respondent Euro SME's inland freight costs for its U.S. sales. Judge Stephen Vaden said that contrary to the exporter's claim that Commerce "threw the book at it," the agency "acted with deliberation, patience, and arguably stayed its hand when it could have drawn adverse inferences more broadly against such a seasoned respondent."
The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 8 opinion made public Feb. 13 remanded some aspects of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on thermal paper from Germany. Judge Gary Katzmann sent back the coding of the static sensitivity product characteristic, classification of Koehler's accrued interest expenses as a cost of production and the use of the Cohen's d test to root out "masked" dumping, staying the case until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issues a decision in Stupp Corp. v. U.S. He sustained Commerce's inclusion of exporter Koehler Paper's "Blue4est" paper product within the scope of the investigation, the agency's coding of the dynamic sensitivity product characteristic and application of price adjustments for some home market rebates.
Indonesia requested dispute consultations at the World Trade Organization on Feb. 12 regarding the EU's antidumping duties on fatty acids from Indonesia, the WTO announced. Indonesia said the duties violate the WTO's Anti-Dumping Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The request formally starts the dispute and sets up both parties to start a 60-day consultation period. Should consultations prove unsuccessful, "the complainant may request adjudication by a panel," the WTO said. The dispute concerns fatty acids, which are used in a "variety of consumer products as well as industrial lubricants."
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Feb. 13 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The Commerce Department will consider whether to grant Armenia market economy status for antidumping duty purposes, it said in a notice released Feb. 12 beginning a changed circumstances review.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Feb. 12 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
While the U.S. remained neutral, a steel nail exporter on Feb. 8 called “moot” a petitioner’s motion to stay one antidumping duty appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit until the petitioner’s other interlocutory appeal had been heard (Oman Fasteners v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1350).
A citric acid exporter said Feb. 9 that the Commerce Department had been wrong to refuse to do a quarterly analysis of the exporter’s costs even though it had faced large cost fluctuations due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Citribel N.V. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00010).