The Court of International Trade on May 18 sustained a second remand redetermination by the Commerce Department in its seventh administrative review of the antidumping duty orders on off-road tires from China, finding Commerce permissibly applied its methodology when it denied separate rate status to Chinese exporters Guizhou Tyre Import and Export (GTC) and Aeolus Tyre and instead assigned the "China-wide" AD rate of 105.31%.
The Commerce Department did not offer any source to justify its use of 24 working days per month as part of its surrogate value calculation for labor in an antidumping review, the Court of International Trade ruled. Remanding parts and sustaining parts of the seventh administrative review of the AD order on multilayered wood flooring from China, Judge Richard Eaton also sent back Commerce's surrogate financial ratio calculation for manufacturing overhead. Eaton did uphold the surrogate value determination for glue, however.
A company unable to prove it has any entries for the purposes of obtaining a separate rate should not automatically be found to have no shipments and be rescinded from the review, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a May 19 opinion. Though the appellate court found the government's claim that it is not required to rescind a review for a company with no entries unconvincing, Judges Timothy Dyk, Richard Linn and Raymond Chen said that Ningbo Qixin did not clear the bar for establishing no shipments, even though Commerce had rejected a separate rate for the company because it couldn't verify any entries.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices May 19 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The Court of International Trade acted on its own initiative to order a "sua sponte" stay in a case on whether the Commerce Department lawfully found that Australian exporter BlueScope Steel (AIS) did not reimburse its affiliate BlueScope Steel Americas (BSA) for antidumping duties on imports of hot-rolled steel flat products. Judge Richard Eaton said the case, which concerns the third administrative review of the AD order on these products from Australia, shares an identical issue with the U.S. Steel Corp. v. U.S. case, which deals with the second administrative review of the same AD order. "That is, the sole issue in the prior U.S. Steel Corp. case was the reimbursement of antidumping duties -- one of two issues in the present case," Eaton said (U.S. Steel Corp. v. United States, CIT # 21-00528).
Importer Repwire and exporter Jin Tiong Electrical Materials Manufacturer will appeal a Court of International Trade decision upholding the Commerce Department's withdrawal of a separate-rate questionnaire it erroneously issued to Jin Tiong in an antidumping duty review. According to the notice of appeal, the companies will take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In the opinion, the trade court said Commerce's rejection of Jin Tiong's answers as untimely was proper since the agency had withdrawn the questionnaire before the exporter submitted its response (see 2303200039) (Repwire v. United States, CIT # 22-00016).
The U.S.'s customs penalty suit against importer Wanxiang America Corp., a U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese manufacturing company, is a "money grab, plain and simple," Michael Roll, counsel for WXA, said during oral argument at the Court of International Trade on May 17. Roll said that because the U.S. is only seeking a penalty for WXA's entries from a company with a 92.84% dumping rate and not entries made before or after the ones at issue from a company with a zero percent rate, it is clear the government is trying to "grab the money" (United States v. Wanxiang America Corp., CIT # 22-00205).
The Court of International Trade sent back parts and upheld parts of the Commerce Department's final results in the seventh administrative review of the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China. Judge Richard Eaton remanded Commerce's surrogate financial ratio calculation for manufacturing overhead and the agency's surrogate value for labor while upholding the surrogate value determination for glue. The judge ruled Commerce engaged in mere speculation by finding that using the indirect production expenses data from a Romanian company's financial statement could be distortive in the overhead calculation. Eaton also found that there was "no source at all" for Commerce's use of 24 working days per month as part of its surrogate labor value calculation.
The Court of International Trade on May 18 upheld the Commerce Department's denial of separate rate status to Chinese exporters Guizhou Tyre Import and Export (GTC) and Aeolus Tyre and the agency's assignment of the "China-wide" AD rate of 105.31% in an antidumping review on off-road tires from China. Judge Timothy Stanceu ruled that Commerce's methodology "exists apart from the provisions in the Tariff Act and regulations," and there was no statutory language, legislative history or regulatory language to lead the court to conclude that Commerce's methodology was unreasonable. The court also recognized Commerce's discretion to "draw reasonable inferences" from evidence on the record, the judge said.
The Commerce Department's new proposed regulations covering trade remedy proceedings may lead to a "significant number of new allegations and arguments in AD/CVD proceedings," Sidley Austin said in a client alert this week. Highlighting three of the potential new tools to be added to the agency's toolkit in the proposed rules, Sidley added that one of the mechanisms -- Commerce's removal of the regulation barring it from countervailing transnational subsidies -- may violate World Trade Organization commitments.