The Court of International Trade granted a request by antidumping respondent Ellwood City Forge to reply to remand comments in an antidumping duty investigation on forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany. CIT Judge Stephen Vaden granted the May 15 request over objections by both DOJ and intervenor Edelstahl Siegen (Ellwood City Forge v. U.S., CIT # 21-00077).
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The Commerce Department's new methodology for evaluating compliance with a 2019 antidumping duty suspension agreement's requirement to eliminate 85% of dumping has forced industry players to "bet their compliance" on "speculation and estimation," exporter International Greenhouse Produce (IGP) argued in a complaint at the Court of International Trade. The exporter added that Commerce also erred by "treating certain transactions involving U.S. brokers as U.S. sales," jettisoning the definition of "broker" seemingly settled in the 1960s (International Greenhouse Produce v. U.S., CIT # 23-00093).
The Court of International Trade on June 7 remanded the Commerce Department's antidumping investigation on raw honey from Argentina. CIT Judge Claire Kelly remanded the department's decision to use Nexco's acquisition costs as a proxy for Argentinian beekeeper's production costs and its decision to compare Nexco's third-country sales and U.S. sales. However, the court did agree with Commerce's decision to compare Nexco's costs on a monthly basis for the purposes of the sales-below cost test and sustained that aspect, saying that Commerce reasonably explained its decision.
The Court of International Trade on June 7 upheld the Commerce Department's first antidumping duty administrative review on aluminum foil from China. Judge M. Miller Baker sustained Commerce's classification of surrogate values for aluminum dross/ash byproduct and rolling oil and rolling oil additive inputs, along with the agency's selection of Maersk data to calculate freight costs. The judge also upheld Commerce's decision not to grant a double remedies adjustment for subsidies to inputs that respondent Jiangsu Zhongji Lamination Materials Co. said were countervailable. Lastly, Baker rejected Zhongji's bid to have Commerce modify its liquidation instructions to include the phrase "resold or imported."
World Trade Organization members decided on new chairpersons for the 14 subsidiary bodies reporting to the Council for Trade in Goods, the WTO announced. The new chairpersons include Turkey's Aysegul Sahinoglu Yerdes for the Committee on Anti-dumping Practices, New Zealand's James Lester for the Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, Finland's Anna Vitie for the Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade and Norway's Kjetil Tysdal for the Committee on Agriculture.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices June 6 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate in two cases -- one on a Chinese exporter's failure to rebut the presumption of government control in an antidumping case and the other on the Commerce Department's anti-circumvention inquiry against exporter Al Ghurair Iron & Steel. In the AD case, the appellate court said respondent Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export Co. failed to rebut the presumption of Chinese government control in the AD administrative review on tapered roller bearings from China since its majority shareholder is a state-owned labor union (see 2304140025). In the anti-circumvention case, the Federal Circuit said Commerce properly supported its decision that AGIS' goods from the United Arab Emirates circumvented AD/CVD on corrosion-resistant steel products from China by using evidence of patterns of trade, level of investment, nature of the production process in the UAE and the extent of production factilities (see 2304120037) (Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export Corp. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 21-2257 )(Al Ghurair Iron & Steel v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-1199).
The U.S. moved to swap its lead counsel in a countervailing duty case after Bret Vallacher, former head attorney in the suit on the CVD investigation on silicon metal from Kazakhstan, left DOJ. The U.S. said Vallacher "is no longer employed by" the department but was not able to withdraw as principal counsel before leaving. Brendan Jordan was put forward by the government as the next lead counsel. Both appellants, led by Tau-Ken Temir, and defendant-appellees, led by Globe Specialty Metals, consented to the swap (Tau-Ken Temir v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2204).