The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should let appellants Tau-Ken Temir and Kazakhstan's Ministry of Trade and Integration make corrections to their opening brief, they said May 8. The parties said they would have filed an additional extension motion had their counsel known of a previously undisclosed visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Kazakhstan on the day the brief was due (Tau-Ken Temir v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2204).
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The Commerce Department reasonably found that it doesn't need to incorporate offsets for the costs of complying with Germany's Electricity and Energy Tax Acts in countervailing duty rate calculations for respondent BGH Edelstahl Siegen, the Court of International Trade said. Ruling on Commerce's remand results in a case on the CVD investigation into forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany, Judge Claire Kelly also remanded the agency's finding of de jure specificity for Germany's KAV program. The judge said Commerce failed to explain how the criteria for the program are economic in nature and horizontal in application.
The chair of the World Trade Organization's Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures urged all WTO members to submit missing subsidy notifications as soon as possible. Chair Sally Bardayan Rivera of Panama, during a May 2 meeting, said 88 members have yet to submit their 2021 notifications, which were due by the middle of 2021. Seventy-five members have not submitted their 2019 subsidy notifications, while 64 have yet to submit their 2017 notifications. "Eight delegations took the floor to urge members to step up their efforts and ensure both timely submission of notifications as well as complete notifications," WTO said.
While the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA), an alternative to the World Trade Organization's Appellate Body, may work for the nations that want an appellate level of review of WTO panel decisions, it doesn't necessarily make sense for U.S. purposes, said Jamieson Greer, former chief of staff for the U.S. trade representative and partner at King & Spalding. Speaking at a May 8 Federalist Society event, Greer said that if the U.S. wanted another level of review at the WTO, the government would simply just start staffing up the AB again rather than pursue a solution under the MPIA.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices May 9 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate May 8 in a case in which it found that the Commerce Department can legally deduct Section 232 steel and aluminum duties from an exporter's U.S. price in antidumping duty proceedings, which raises the respondent's dumping margins (see 2303150035). In its March opinion, the appellate court said the presidential proclamation imposing the duties made clear that the tariffs were meant to be added to any applicable antidumping duties, though the court clarified that this ruling applies only to President Donald Trump's Section 232 duties and not all presidential action taken under this statute (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 21-2097).
CIT Sends Back Parts, Upholds Parts of AD Review on Wood Flooring From China in Confidential Opinion
The Court of International Trade in a confidential opinion upheld parts and sent back parts of the Commerce Department's administrative review of the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China. In a letter to litigants, Judge Richard Eaton gave the parties until May 12 to review the confidential information in the opinion and respond.
The Court of International Trade on April 27 upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a case involving the 2018 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on utility scale wind towers from Vietnam. The Wind Tower Trade Coalition failed to convince the court that CS Wind Vietnam manipulated its rate in the review by redesigning its operations or that Commerce failed to correctly investigate the source of steel plate used in the towers.