No lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade.
The Commerce Department made multiple errors, including miscalculating benchmark data and the use of adverse inferences, in a countervailing duty review on multilayered wood flooring from China, Baroque Timber Industries said in its Sept. 15 reply at the Court of International Trade. Those alleged errors resulted in inaccurate CVD rates for Fine Furniture and other Chinese wood flooring exporters, Baroque said in a motion for judgment in March (see 2303100041) (Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00210).
The Commerce Department erred when it found that canvas banner matisse imported by Berger Textiles was subject to the antidumping duty order on certain artists' canvas from China was in error, said Berger in a Sept. 15 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Berger asked the court to find that the matisse is expressly outside the scope of the orders and to remand the issue back to Commerce (Berger Textiles v. U.S., CIT # 23-00192).
The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 19 opinion remanded the International Trade Commission's affirmative injury finding in the countervailing duty investigations on phosphate fertilizers from Morocco and Russia. Judge Stephen Vaden said the commission did not properly support its "central" conclusion that the imports depressed prices because their significant volumes "created oversupply conditions in a declining market and low prices." Noting this finding "undergirds" the remaining statutory considerations -- volume, price effects and impact -- Vaden remanded the undersupply analysis with special instructions to also reconsider the volume, price and impact analyses should the commission stick with its initial conclusion.
The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 19 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping case on South Korean large power transformers, which allowed respondent Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. to supplement its questionnaire response by providing additional information pertaining to service-related revenues and expenses. The remand period was opened following a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruling that Hyundai should have been given the chance to supplement the record and that Commerce's use of partial adverse facts available was "unsupported by substantial evidence." No party contested the record, so Judge Mark Barnett upheld the remand results.
On a panel on critical minerals ally-shoring, panelists representing the perspective of Latin America, the U.S., the EU and, to some degree, China, agreed that the current race to lock down supplies of the raw materials needed for advanced batteries, wind turbines and computer chips is one where every man is out for himself, and resource-rich countries in the Global South are exploited.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Sept. 18 on AD/CVD proceedings:
CBP determined there is substantial evidence that LTT International Trading Co. evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders on quartz surface products from China (A-570-084/C-570-085). CBP said transshipped the covered merchandise through Taiwan and declared that the entries of Chinese-origin quartz surface products were of Taiwan origin, CBP said in its Sept. 12 evasion notice. LTT repeatedly missed opportunities to potentially disprove the allegation and to rebut the evidence on the record, CBP said.
CBP commenced a formal Enforce and Protect Act investigation on whether Midwest Livestock Systems evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders by entering Chinese-origin steel grating (A-570-947/C-570-948) in the form of “tri-bar flooring” that was not declared as covered merchandise into the U.S. Based on available information, CBP determined that there was reasonable suspicion of evasion by Midwest and imposed interim measures.
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade: