The Commerce Department permissibly used respondent Habas Sinai ve Tibbi Gazlar Istihsal Endustrisi's Turkish lira-denominated sales to value the company's home-market sales in the 2018-19 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on cold-rolled steel flat products from Turkey, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on July 29.
Court of International Trade Judge Mark Barnett pressed counsel for petitioner Edsal Manufacturing during oral argument on July 23 regarding the company's challenge to the Commerce Department's surrogate financial statement selection in the antidumping duty investigation on boltless steel shelving units from Thailand. Barnett also sharply questioned Edsal's counsel regarding their challenge to Commerce's use of the commercial invoice date as the date of sale for respondent Siam Metal Tech's U.S. sales and the agency's reliance on respondent Bangkok Sheet Metal's total cost of manufacture value (Edsal Manufacturing Co. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00108).
Importer Grosfillex agreed to pay $4.9 million to settle claims that it violated the False Claims Act by evading antidumping and countervailing duties on items made with aluminum extrusions from China, DOJ announced. The FCA case was initially filed by Edward Wisner, a former employee of Grosfillex and whistleblower in the case, who will receive a $962,662.74 cut of the settlement.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 29 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department cannot investigate "transnational" subsidies, countervailing duty respondent Kukdo Chemical argued in a July 25 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Challenging the countervailing duty investigation on epoxy resins from South Korea, Kukdo said it's challenging "any and all substantive aspects of Commerce's" finding that the company received a countervailable subsidy via the provision of Epichlorohydrin (ECH) for less than adequate remuneration from China (Kukdo Chemical v. United States, CIT # 25-00146).
In a July 21 opinion made public July 25, the Court of International Trade remanded the Commerce Department’s administrative review of antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on Chinese-origin aluminum foil, saying that the department had to reconsider or explain why it refused the review’s exporters a double remedies offset. It said the relevant law requires the department to calculate a subsidy's price impact based on what the price might have been without the subsidy, not on whether prices declined during the review period.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on July 29 sustained the Commerce Department's 2018-19 review of the antidumping duty order on cold-rolled steel flat products from Turkey in which the agency's decision to use Turkish lira to value respondent Habas Sinai ve Tibbi Gazlar Istihsal Endustrisi's home-market sales. While Habas said Commerce had to follow its precedent by using the respondent's dollar-denominated sales, Judges Kimberly Moore, Todd Hughes and Tiffany Cunningham held that Commerce had no such obligation, since Habas failed to "reconcile its lira-denominated payment records with its reported dollar prices." The judges also rejected the respondent's claim that the use of the lira-denominated prices distorted the AD margin calculation, finding that Commerce properly relied on Habas' reported lira values, which were the only reliable prices.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on July 28 sustained the Commerce Department's non-market economy policy in antidumping duty proceedings despite the fact that the agency hadn't codified the policy in its regulations at the time the underlying review was challenged. Judges Todd Hughes, William Bryson and Leonard Stark said the Federal Circuit has a long line of cases upholding the policy and that, even if those cases didn't exist, Commerce didn't need to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking to implement the policy.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 28 on AD/CVD proceedings: