The U.S. opened a customs penalty suit against surety company XL Specialty Insurance on July 17, seeking over $3.6 million in unpaid duties and interested owed on customs bonds. The government said XL "materially breached the terms of the subject bonds" by refusing to pay following CBP's demand for payment (United States v. XL Specialty Insurance, CIT # 25-00154).
The Court of International Trade on July 18 sustained the results of the Commerce Department's 2021-22 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on stainless steel sheet and strip in coils from Taiwan. Judge Gary Katzmann held that Commerce properly calculated the rate for the non-selected companies "equal to the expected method," which is a weighted average of the two mandatory respondents' adverse facts available rate. Importer CME Acquisitions failed to show that the resulting 21.1% rate isn't "reasonably reflective of the non-selected companies' potential dumping margin," Katzmann held. In addition, the judge said CME Acquisitions "had ample notice and opportunity to provide evidence to the contrary."
The Court of International Trade on July 18 granted the government's motion for default judgment against importer Rayson Global and its owner Doris Cheng, ordering the defendants to pay a civil penalty totaling nearly $3.4 million along with all duties, taxes and fees that remain unpaid on the unliquidated entries of mattress innersprings at issue in the case. Judge Timothy Stanceu granted the motion for default judgment after previously rejecting the government's valuation of the merchandise due to its lack of factual support. This time around, Stanceu found that the U.S. properly pleaded that Rayson and Cheng negligently declared their Chinese-origin innerspring as being from Thailand, avoiding ordinary 6% duties, Section 301 duties and 234.51% antidumping duties.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 17 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department appropriately stuck with its decision on remand to select Germany as the third country for determining antidumping duty respondent Prochamp's normal value in the AD investigation on Dutch mushrooms, the Court of International Trade held on July 16. Judge M. Miller Baker said Commerce fully supported its efforts to account for the percent of Prochamp's product sold to Germany that is actually resold in another country and, thus, its finding that Germany remained the best comparison market.
The Court of International Trade on July upheld the Commerce Department's finding on remand that antidumping duty respondent Megaa Moda didn't have either actual or constructive knowledge that its sales to an unnamed company were destined for export to the U.S. Judge Thomas Aquilino said that while he may have come to a different conclusion upon reviewing the evidence de novo, it's not the court's role to substitute its judgment for Commerce's when the choice is "between two conflicting views."
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 16 on AD/CVD proceedings:
Exporters BYD (H.K.), Canadian Solar International and Canadian Solar Manufacturing (Thailand) will appeal a pair of May Court of International Trade decisions finding that various exporters circumvented the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on Chinese solar cells by sending their products through Thailand and Cambodia (see 2505160045). In both decisions, the trade court upheld Commerce's decision to put special emphasis on the amount of research and development investment the companies put into their Thai facilities to show that the companies' processes in the country were "minor or insignificant."
The Commerce Department was right to find that the material terms of exporter Toyo Kohan’s U.S. sales were finalized the earlier of each sale’s shipment date or invoice date, the government and petitioner Thomas Steel Strip Corp. each said July 11 (Toyo Kohan Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00261).