Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should stay a case concerning an antidumping duty investigation after the termination of a suspension agreement on tomatoes from Mexico while two related cases are being considered at the lower court, Mexican exporter Bioparques de Occidente said in an Aug. 8 motion to stay (Bioparques de Occidente, S.A. de C.V., et al. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-2109).
No lawsuits have been filed recently at the Court of International Trade.
Parties in a suit over the Commerce Department's expedited countervailing duty review on softwood lumber disagreed on whether the Court of International Trade should tell Commerce to exclude four Canadian exporters from the CVD order following the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's order saying the agency has the authority to conduct the review. In a joint status report filed Aug. 7, the Canadian parties in the case, which include the Canadian government, said the court should tell Commerce to exclude the companies and tell CBP to stop collecting CVD cash deposits, while the petitioner said a joint status report is not the correct venue for the request (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. U.S., CIT # 19-00122).
Commerce did not have the right to institute an administrative review of an antidumping duty case while the underlying order was provisionally revoked, Goodluck India said during an Aug. 1 oral argument at the Court of International Trade. In response to questions from Judge Gary Katzmann, the central issue in the suit shifted from whether Commerce lawfully ordered liquidation at a rate vacated at the time of entry to whether the agency had the right to start a review of Goodluck while the AD order was provisionally revoked, pending appeal (Goodluck India v. U.S., CIT # 22-00024).
The Commerce Department stuck by its position that Germany's KAV program is de jure specific and can be countervailed as part of the countervailing duty investigation on forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade Aug. 7, Commerce said that because the German government, through legislation, limited access to the program's relief to a "group" of enterprises, the eligibility criteria are vertical and satisfy the de jure specificity standard laid out in the statute (BGH Edelstahl Siegen v. U.S., CIT # 21-00080).
The Commerce Department stuck by its benchmark picks for the land program and the aluminum plate, sheet and strip program in a suit on the 2016-17 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on aluminum foil from China. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on Aug. 4, Commerce said Trade Data Monitor data on Harmonized System subheading 7606.12 was properly used as the benchmark for the aluminum plate program, and that a 2010 Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis (CBRE) report on Thailand was the proper land benchmark (Jiangsu Zhongji Lamination Materials Co. v. U.S., CIT # 21-00133).
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Aug. 7 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Exporter Pirelli Tyre Co. will appeal a Court of International Trade decision finding that Pirelli failed to rebut the presumption of Chinese government control in the 2017-18 review of the antidumping duty order on passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China. According to the notice of appeal, the exporter will take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In the opinion, the trade court said there isn't a different standard of proof for rebutting the presumption of government control in antidumping proceedings based on the degree of the foreign state's ownership stake in a respondent (see 2306120055) (Pirelli Tyre Co. v. United States, CIT # 20-00115).