Judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit during Jan. 12 oral arguments expressed skepticism over claims from antidumping respondent Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export Corp. (ZMC) in its bid to rebut the presumption of government control and win a separate rate in an antidumping duty review. Judges Sharon Prost, Jimmy Reyna and Todd Hughes questioned whether ZMC's ownership structure could ever be truly free of government control, calling it "implausible." At another point in the arguments, DOJ attorney Kelly Krystyniak said that given the combination of China's corporate laws and ZMC's ownership, it may be impossible to rebut the presumption of government control and that ZMC has no inherent right to be able to rebut it (Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 21-2257).
The Court of International Trade in a confidential Dec. 22 opinion made public Jan. 13 upheld parts and sent back parts of the Commerce Department's sixth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China. Judge Richard Eaton said Commerce properly used adverse facts available for respondent Sino-Maple based on the company's failure to provide constructed export price information on a per-transaction basis for U.S. sales that third-country manufacturers made to its U.S. affiliate. The judge, however, sent back the AFA rate itself, finding the agency can't set the AFA rate for one respondent at the highest transaction-specific margin for the other respondent. Eaton also upheld Commerce's decisions to reject separate rate applications from Scholar Home and Baishan Huafeng.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Jan. 12 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Jan. 10 order stayed the due date for plaintiff-appellants' reply brief in a countervailing duty case, pending the resolution of the appellants' motion seeking another 900 words for their reply. The appellants, the province of Quebec, Marmen, Marmen Energie, Marmen Energy and the government of Canada, claimed good cause existed to give them the additional words since the U.S. argued that the appellants failed to exhaust their administrative remedies relating to the specificity of the Quebec On-The-Job Training Tax Credit in addition to the four underlying issues in the case (Quebec v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-1807).
Exporter Oman Fasteners has failed to show that paying cash deposits for antidumping duties will cause it immediate and irreparable harm, the U.S. argued in a Jan. 11 brief opposing the exporter's bid for a preliminary injunction against the payment of the cash deposits. The government said that Oman Fastener's bid to suspend collection of the cash deposits "asks for relief far beyond" the usual procedures "such that the United States would have almost no security to cover future duty liability." The exporter also has not shown that it will likely succeed on the merits of the case, the government said (Oman Fasteners v. United States, CIT # 22-00348).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard claims over whether Krakatu POSCO -- a joint venture between a private South Korean steel company and an Indonesian government-owned firm -- was an authority or directed by an authority for the purposes of a countervailing duty investigation. During oral arguments Jan. 11 before Judges Alan Lourie, Timothy Dyk and Kara Stoll, counsel for CVD petitioner Wind Tower Trade Coalition, Kenertec Power System and the U.S. also argued over whether Indonesia's Rediscount Loan Program was an upstream subsidy and thus countervailable (Kenertec Power System v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 20-03687).
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 11 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a case over the antidumping review of large power transformers from South Korea. On remand, Commerce hit respondent Hyundai Electric & Energy Systems with total adverse facts available for missing service-related revenues and the exporter's failure of the completeness test at verification. Judge Mark Barnett said substantial evidence backed the use of total AFA, as opposed to partial AFA as claimed by Hyundai.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Jan. 11 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The Commerce Department illegally based the dumping rate for separate rate respondents on a single mandatory respondent, plaintiffs Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. and Carbon Activated Corp. argued in a Jan. 9 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit established that Commerce is not allowed to do so, in its August 2022 decision in YC Rubber (North America) v. U.S., the plaintiffs said (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00335).
The Commerce Department stuck by its decisions not to account for compliance costs in its countervailing duty calculations for programs under the Electricity Tax Act and Energy Tax Act and to find that Germany's KAV program is de jure specific, in remand results filed with the Court of International Trade on Jan. 10. Commerce said that it did not make any changes to the CVD rates in the investigation for respondent BGH Edelstahl Siegen (BGH Edelstahl Siegen v. United States, CIT # 21-00080).