President Joe Biden's two nominees to fill vacancies at the Court of International Trade, Schagrin Associates' Joseph Laroski and the Commerce Department's Lisa Wang (see 2307120021), went before the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing on July 26. The two nominees faced questioning from the senators, including inquiries into their backgrounds and how their past experiences will shape their decision-making on the bench.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 28 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The Commerce Department has “never specified the scope, content or format” of a certification that a company’s U.S. customers didn't benefit from China’s Export Buyer’s Credit Program, so the agency shouldn't have immediately applied adverse facts available to a Chinese exporter because its non-use certification didn’t fulfill its requirements, the exporter, Qingdao Ge Rui Da Rubber (GRT), said in a reply brief filed with the Court of International Trade July 21 (Qingdao Ge Rui Da Rubber Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00229).
CBP violated importer Royal Brush Manufacturing's due process rights by failing to provide it access to business confidential information (BCI) in an antidumping and countervailing duty evasion proceeding, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a highly anticipated opinion on July 27.
Anna Dias, former partner at Gide Loyrette, has joined DLA Piper as an international trade partner in the Brussels office, the firm announced. Dias' practice will center on international trade law and EU regulatory matters with a special focus on antidumping, anti-subsidy and safeguard proceedings along with World Trade Organization rules-related advice, the firm said. She also works on EU sanctions compliance. Prior to working at Gide Loyrette, Dias worked for the Brazilian Mission to the WTO in Geneva.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 27 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department, on remand at the Court of International Trade, incorporated information from antidumping duty respondent Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. regarding its service-related revenues and expenses, slashing the exporter's dumping rate from 16.13% to 4.69%. Commerce solicited this information from the company after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit told the agency to let Hyundai supplement the record (Hitachi Energy USA v. U.S., CIT # 16-00054).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a key July 27 opinion held that CBP violated importer Royal Brush Manufacturing's rights to due process by refusing to allow it access to business confidential information in an antidumping and countervailing duty evasion proceeding. The court ruled that the "relatively immutable" principle of due process, where the government must provide access to the evidence used as the basis for an action that seriously injures an individual, extends to administrative proceedings. Judge Timothy Dyk, the author of the opinion, said the court is aware of no such court holding showing that business confidential information is exempt from this rule, adding there is no "legitimate government interest" in refusing to provide access to this information in Enforce and Protect Act cases. The court also said there is no case supporting the government's "extraordinary theory" that it can avoid due process compliance by failing to provide for a protective order.
The Commerce Department improperly used Cohen's d test to root out masked dumping because the agency violated statistical assmptions inherent to the test, SeAH Steel told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the opening brief of its appeal. While Commerce justified its use of the test because it used a whole population, not a sample, SeAH said the academic literature shows the d test was meant to be used as a measure of effect size only when the data comes from samples with "normal distributions, with roughly equal variance, and a sufficient number of data-points" (Stupp Corp. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1663).