The Court of International Trade on March 3 upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping duty case that slashed the dumping margin for respondent Ajmal Steel Tubes & Pipe Industries after the agency accepted the company's answers to the Section A quesitonnaire response. CIT's order came after neither Ajmal nor AD petitioner Wheatland Tube submitted comments on the remand.
Taiwanese exporter Inventec Solar Energy Corp. (ISEC) had constructive knowledge that sales to JA Solar USA were destined for the U.S., so those sales should be included as U.S. sales in the antidumping duty rate calculated for ISEC in an administrative review on solar products from Taiwan, the Commerce Department said in March 2 remand results (JA Solar International v. United States, CIT # 21-00514).
The Court of International Trade on March 3 granted two plaintiff-intervenors' motion for a preliminary injunction stopping liquidation for their entries, rejecting government arguments that the injunction would have impermissibly expanded the issues in the case. Citing past CIT judgments, Judge Mark Barnett held that the enlargement concept is only reserved for cases where an intervenor adds new legal claims to those already before the court.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices March 3 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The Court of International Trade should allow four domestic steel producers to intervene on the side of the International Trade Commission in a case contesting the ITC's injury finding in an antidumping duty investigation on hot-rolled steel imports from Turkey, those producers argued in a Feb. 27 brief at the Court of International Trade (Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari v. United States, CIT # 22-00349)
The Court of International Trade should sustain the Commerce Department's remand results after the agency further explained its surrogate value selection for coal-based carbonized materials and the financial statements used to calculate the surrogate financial ratios in the 2018-19 antidumping review on activated carbon, both DOJ and defendent-intervenors told CIT in separate responses submitted March 1 (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. v. U.S., CIT # 21-00131).
The Court of International Trade in a March 1 confidential opinion denied parts and granted parts of Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret's motion for judgment in a case concerning the antidumping duty investigation on common alloy aluminum sheet from Turkey, remanding aspects of the case to the Commerce Department. In a letter, Judge Gary Katzmann gave the litigants until March 7 to review the confidential information in the opinion (Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 21-00246).
The Court of International Trade in a March 3 order upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping case which slashed the dumping margin for respondent Ajmal Steel Tubes & Pipe Industries after the agency accepted the company's answers to the Section A questionnaire response originally rejected as untimely filed. The document was turned in late due to technical complications as a result of firm Barnes Richardson's switch to a work-from-home environment. The court remanded the issue since Commerce gave itself numerous extensions while rejecting the two-hour late submission.
Solar panel mounts made by China Custom Manufacturing do not qualify for the "finished merchandise" exclusion from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a March 2 opinion. Upholding the Court of International Trade, judges Pauline Newman, Raymond Chen and Tiffany Cunningham said the matter is "governed squarely" by the appellate court's ruling in Shenyang Yuanda Aluminum Indus. Eng'g Co. v. U.S., which said a "part or subassembly ... cannot be a finished product."
The World Trade Organization's multiparty interim appeal arbitration arrangement (MPIA), an alternative to the defunct Appellate Body, proved to be "operational" after it ensured the right of parties in an antidumping duties dispute to appeal dispute panel reports and to receive a "final, binding ruling, without loopholes to block the process," Geneva Graduate Institute law professor Joost Pauwelyn said in a Feb. 27 blog post. Pauwelyn said MPIA led to the resolution of a recent dispute on frozen fries "without blockage," which preserved “the system's 'binding character and two levels of adjudication.'"