The Commerce Department legally relied on respondents Allied Natural Product's and Ambrosia Natural Products (India)'s raw honey acquisition costs as a proxy to calculate cost of production in the antidumping duty investigation into raw honey from India, the respondents argued in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Issuing the brief as a supplement to the government's claims, Allied and Ambrosia added that, contrary to petitioner American Honey Producers Association's claims, Commerce did not use the beekepeers' and "middlemen" suppliers' costs as "benchmarks" for setting the cost of honey (American Honey Producers Association v. U.S., CIT # 22-00195).
The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's use of total facts otherwise available with an adverse inference on remand in an antidumping duty case concerning wooden cabinets and vanities from China, according to an April 24 opinion. Judge Miller Baker upheld Commerce's use of AFA and its selection of the 262.18% China-wide rate for Dalian Meisen.
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The Commerce Department has the statutory authority to conduct expedited countervailing duty reviews, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held April 25. Reversing a Court of International Trade ruling overturning the agency's authority to carry out such reviews, Judges Timothy Dyk, Jimmie Reyna and Richard Taranto said the legal ground for the review process is found in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act's enactment of certain provisions that favor individual company determinations and the URAA's "grant of regulatory-implementation power to Commerce."
The Court of International Trade remanded the Commerce Department's 2018 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on rebar from Turkey. Judge Gary Katzmann said that, with respect to Commerce's attribution to respondent Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret of subsidies received by affiliated ship building company Nur Gemicilik ve Tic, the agency didn't adequately explain its finding Nur was a cross-owned input supplier of primarily dedicated inputs. Commerce erroneously said that since it previously found that "scrap" is an input primarily dedicated to the production of downstream steel products, "it is a matter of routine." Katzmann ruled this prior decision was fact-specific and not applicable to the present case.
The World Trade Organization's published agenda for the Dispute Settlement Body's April 28 meeting includes U.S. status reports on the implementation of DSB recommendations on antidumping measures on certain hot-rolled steel products from Japan; antidumping and countervailing measures on large residential washers from South Korea; certain methodologies and their application to antidumping proceedings involving China; and Section 110(5) of the U.S. Copyright Act. Status reports are also expected from Indonesia on measures related to the import of horticultural products, animals and animal products, and from the EU on measures affecting the approval and marketing of biotech products.
The Commerce Department correctly chose surrogate data in an antidumping duty administrative review on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam, DOJ said in an April 20 response brief at the Court of International Trade. DOJ asked the court to sustain the final results of the AD review, saying that the various challenges to the country selection, separate rate and use of adverse facts available should be rejected (Green Farms Seafood Joint Stock Company v. U.S., CIT # 22-00092).
Appellants Sigma Corp. and Smith-Cooper International rely too much on industry jargon to argue Vandewater International's steel branch outlets are not butt-welded and aren't subject to the antidumping duty order on butt-weld pipe fittings from China, the U.S. argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The government said that "a wide array of record evidence contradicts" Sigma and SCI's "core" claim that the term "butt-weld" has a single, unambiguous meaning excluding welded outlets from the scope (Vandewater International v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1093).
The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's refusal to adjust its threshold for differentiating between types of pasta in its duty calculations in the 2018-19 review of the antidumping duty order on pasta from Italy. Respondent La Molisana had argued the agency's "breakpoint" of 12.5% protein content did not reflect the market reality, saying the true point separating premium from regular pasta was 13.5% protein content. In his April 24 opinion, Judge Richard Eaton said the company's evidence, while unrebutted, was not applicable industrywide, making it "unreliable and insufficient."
The Commerce Department has the statutory authority to conduct expedited countervailing duty reviews, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held April 25. Reversing a Court of International Trade ruling concerning imports of certain softwood lumber products from Canada, Judges Timothy Dyk, Jimmie Reyna and Richard Taranto said that authority for the review process is found in the Uruguay Round Agreement Act's enactment of certain provisions that favor individual company determinations and the URAA's "grant of regulatory-implementation power to Commerce." Taranto, the opinion's author, added that logically, it is clear why an expedited process may be needed to ensure that the individualized determination preference of the statute is implemented.