U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit judges Alan Lourie, Kara Stoll and Tiffany Cunningham questioned both the position of the government and affected domestic producers in a Dec. 5 oral argument on whether CBP properly denied payouts of interest assessed after liquidation, known as delinquency interest, on antidumping and countervailing duties under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 (Adee Honey Farms v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2105) (Hilex Poly Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2106).
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Dec. 5 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 1 order stayed a customs fraud case against Zhe "John" Liu pending resolution of the ongoing criminal investigation of Liu. The civil case against Liu and importer GL Paper Distribution was filed at the trade court in July 2022, in which the U.S. alleged that Liu operated a scheme via a series of companies that imported steel wire hangers that were given false countries of origin. Liu allegedly created the companies for a transshipment scheme that involved sending wire hangers from China subject to antidumping and countervailing duties through Malaysia, India and Thailand in a bid to disguise their origin (see 2303160050). Judge Jane Restani stayed the government's case against Liu and GL Paper, ordering the parties to file a joint status report April 1 (U.S. v. Zhe "John" Liu, CIT # 22-00215).
Several Indian quartz surface product exporters and U.S. importers oppose a U.S. quartz countertop manufacturer's bid for an injunction to suspend liquidation of Indian quartz surface product imports more than eight months after the deadline. The U.S. manufacturer’s motion was prompted by the consolidated plaintiffs’ attempt to dissolve their own, similar injunction (Cambria Company v. U.S., CIT # 23-00007).
The Commerce Department misapplied the four factors used in determining whether companies are de facto controlled by a foreign government in finding exporter Guizhou Tyre was controlled by the Chinese state in the antidumping duty investigation on truck and bus tires from China, the exporter argued. Filing its opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Guizhou Tyre said that Commerce improperly used its government control analysis for firms majority owned by a state-owned enterprise in finding it failed to rebut the presumption of state control, since the exporter is only minority owned by an SOE (Guizhou Tyre Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2165).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Dec. 4 again ruled against Commerce's use of a particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test in antidumping duty cases.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Nov. 27-28 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):
Japanese exporter Nippon Steel Corp. failed to exhaust its claim that Section 232 duties weren't included in the prices it charged to its unrelated U.S. buyers in a trio of the exporter's cases against three antidumping reviews of hot-rolled steel flat products from Japan, AD petitioner Nucor Corp. argued. Filing a supplemental brief to the Court of International Trade on Dec. 1, Nucor said that Nippon Steel failed to raise the argument in any of the three reviews and failed to plead the claim "with sufficiency," thereby waiving the argument (Nippon Steel Corp. v. United States, CIT # 21-00533, 22-00183, 23-00112).
The Commerce Department shouldn't have granted a de minimis antidumping duty rate to a respondent in the AD investigation on preserved mushrooms from the Netherlands, the domestic petitioner for the investigation argued in a motion for judgment filed at the Court of International Trade Nov. 21 (Giorgio Foods v. U.S., CIT # 23-00133).