The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices April 22 on AD/CVD proceedings:
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said last week that Mexico can impose duties on U.S imports of chicken and pork legs in response to the U.S. Commerce Department’s notice that it will be ending the 2019 suspension of Mexican tomato duties. Her government is conducting antidumping investigations on both meat products, she noted.
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade on April 19 denied a group of Canadian lumber exporters' bid to have the court explicitly state CBP's obligation to refund countervailing duty cash deposits established by the court in a previous decision. Judge Mark Barnett said the exporters haven't shown that there was any clerical or other mistake in the court's previous order and that "the equities do not favor granting" this requested relief.
CIT Says Several Components, Finishing Work for Sinks Shouldn't Have Been Included in Dutiable Value
The value of sink components and finishing work that either (1) wasn’t covered under the relevant antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders, or, (2) didn’t originate in China, shouldn’t have been included in the sinks’ dutiable value because the orders' language didn't specifically include them, Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ruled April 21. However, packaging costs should have been, she said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed April 21 the Commerce Department’s decision to adjust wind tower exporter Dongkuk S&C Co.’s steel plate input costs based on fluctuations in the input’s price over time -- price fluctuations unrelated to the plate’s physical characteristics. The department isn’t limited to adjusting only the costs of the physical characteristics it has used to define CONNUMs, it said.
The Court of International Trade cannot order the reliquidation of finally liquidated entries except where a protest has been filed or a civil action has been filed challenging an antidumping duty or countervailing duty determination, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on April 21. Judges Richard Taranto and Raymond Chen held that the statute, 19 U.S.C. 1514, doesn't let the trade court order reliquidation based on equitable considerations.
The Court of International Trade on April 21 remanded a Commerce Department scope ruling that found a paint sprayer nozzle importer’s products weren’t heat sinks and thus weren't exempt from antidumping duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China. The department “added a new requirement” to the five-factor test identifying heat sinks, saying that an import can't be dual-purpose, CIT Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said (Wagner Spray Tech Corp. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00241).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 22 held that the Commerce Department may not use the Cohen's d test to detect targeted dumping where the "underlying data is not normally distributed, equally variable, and equally and sufficiently numerous." Judges Sharon Prost, Richard Taranto and Raymond Chen said it's "unreasonable" for Commerce to use the d test on data sets that don't satisfy the statistical assumptions, adding that the agency's argument that the assumptions need not apply when using the test on the entire population of data as opposed to just samples "strains credulity." Remanding the antidumping duty investigation of utility-scale wind towers from Canada, the Federal Circuit also sent back Commerce's rejection of respondent Marmen's supplemental cost-reconciliation item meant to correct certain purchase information that hadn't been properly converted from U.S. dollars to Canadian dollars. However, the court sustained Commerce's decision to weight-average Marmen's reported steel plate costs.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices April 21 on AD/CVD proceedings: