Antidumping petitioner Mid Continent Steel & Wire asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for an expedited briefing schedule in a case on the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available due to a 16-minute late submission (Oman Fasteners v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1661).
The Court of International Trade in a March 21 opinion made public March 29 upheld parts and sent back parts of the Commerce Department's final results in the first administrative review of the countervailing duty order on aluminum foil from China. Judge Timothy Reif said Commerce properly rejected a benchmark submission from the respondents, led by Jiangsu Zhongji Lamination Materials Co., and legally calculated the benchmark for the primary aluminum program. Reif remanded the case on the grounds that the agency did not properly explain its decision to pick the Trade Data Monitor data source to calculate the aluminum plate/sheet program benchmark or its selection of data to calculate the benchmark for the land program.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices March 28-29 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit temporarily suspended a False Claims Act case over whether Sigma Corp. and other companies failed to pay antidumping duties on pipe fitting imports. The court ordered the case "held in abeyance" because of pending cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Congress intended for subsidies given to "disparate processed agricultural products" to be countervailable under countervailing duty laws, the Coalition for Fair Trade in Ripe Olives argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Responding to arguments from three Spanish olive exporters against the Commerce Department's "substantially dependent finding" in the Spanish olives CVD investigation, the coalition said that Commerce "responsibly interpreted the statutory language broadly" and in line with statutory intent (Asociacion de Exportadores e Industriales de Aceitunas de Mesa v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1162).
No lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade.
The Court of International Trade did not direct the Commerce Department to account for compliance costs incurred by countervailing duty respondent BGH Edelstahl Siegen in the agency's subsidy calculations, the U.S. argued in defense of its decision not to consider BGH's costs of compliance with Germany's Electricity Tax Act and Energy Act Act (BGH Edelstahl Siegen v. U.S., CIT # 21-00080).
The statute of limitations for collection of duties under a bond expires six years after the relevant entries are liquidated, surety Aegis Security Insurance Co. said in its response to a customs penalty complaint from the government. Aegis disputed the U.S. claim that the calculation of delinquency runs from the billing of the subject entry (U.S. v. Aegis Security Insurance Co., CIT # 22-00327).
Commerce made errors in its calculations, choice of data, and use of adverse facts available during the eighth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China, according to four separate motions for judgment filed at the Court of International Trade. The case combined several complaints all challenging aspects of Commerce’s final determination (see 2208300012) (Jinko Solar Import and Export Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00219).