The Commerce Department properly found that window wall system kits imported by Reflection Window + Wall are excluded from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Jan. 18 order. Judge Stephen Vaden held that Commerce appropriately held that the window wall systems qualified for the "finished goods kit" exclusion to the orders and were properly distinguished from curtain wall units. The judge added that the scope ruling does not cut against past scope decisions.
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 18 opinion sent back an antidumping review over the Commerce Department's decision to reject AD petitioner Nucor Tubular's ministerial error comments as untimely. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said the exception to the requirement that comments be timely filed applies in this case since Commerce's "unintentional errors became apparent only in the Final Results" of the AD review. Since Nucor should have been allowed to submit its comments on the ministerial error, the court remanded the review to consider the error "and respond accordingly," the judge said.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Jan. 18 on AD/CVD proceedings:
Plaintiff Dongkuk S&C Co. will appeal a November 2022 Court of International Trade opinion upholding the Commerce Department's surrogate data selection and steel plate cost adjustments in an antidumping duty investigation. The exporter will take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the notice of appeal said. The case deals with the AD investigation on utility scale wind towers from South Korea. In the opinion, the trade court upheld Commerce's finding that Dongkuk's reported steel plate costs do not reasonably reflect the cost of making wind towers (see 2211170084). The court further said that Commerce properly used exporter SeAH Steel Holdings Corp.'s 2018 consolidated financial statement as the basis for constructed value calculations for Dongkuk's profit and selling expenses (Dongkuk S&C Co. v. U.S., CIT # 20-03686).
The Commerce Department erred when it treated Section 232 steel and aluminum duties as ordinary customs duties and deducted them from antidumping duty respondent Borusan's export price and constructed export price, the respondent argued in a Jan. 17 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT #23-00005).
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 13 order granted the Commerce Department's voluntary remand request in an antidumping duty case. Commerce wanted the remand period to review the non-selected respondents' rate in an AD review since the rate was based on the prior administrative review's rate, which was changed after separate litigation at the trade court (Danyang Weiwang Tools Manufacturing Co. v. U.S., CIT # 19-00006).
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The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 16 paperless order denied a U.S. motion to exclude live testimony from plaintiff Oman Fasteners' CEO, Seve Karaga, in an antidumping duty case. The court said that Oman Fasteners can call Karaga to testify at the Jan. 23 hearing over the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction, though the testimony "shall be confined to the facts set forth in his declaration attached to Plaintiffs motion" (Oman Fasteners v. United States, CIT # 22-00348).
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 18 opinion sent back the Commerce Department's final results in an antidumping review on heavy walled rectangular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Mexico. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said comments from petitioner Nucor Tubular Products on ministerial errors present in the rate calculations for respondents Maquilacero and Prolamsa were improperly denied as untimely. The comments qualify for an exception to the rule that the notes be timely filed because the errors arose after the review's final results, the judge said.
The Court of International Trade should have allowed a company that filed an attorney conflict-of-interest suit involving an International Trade Commission AD/CVD injury proceeding to amend its allegations to comply with the court's opinion, rather than dismissing the case outright with leave to file under a different jurisdictional provision, said the company, Amstead Rail Co., in an opening brief filed Jan. 13 at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Amsted Rail Company v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1355).