Plaintiffs in an antidumping duty review challenge at the Court of International Trade, led by Grupo Simec, filed their opposition on Dec. 2 to the Commerce Department's move to add a memorandum to the administrative record. The plaintiffs said the move to add the memo -- a questionnaire deficiencies analysis for AD respondent Grupo Simec -- more than four months after the record closed was illegal because the document had never been "filed, published" or otherwise sent to the parties (Grupo Simec v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 22-00202).
The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 6 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a case on an administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen warmwater shrimp from India. On remand, the agency used respondent Z.A. Sea Food's Vietnamese sales to calculate normal value. The domestic shrimp industry contested this, arguing Commerce should use constructed value since there is no evidence the shrimp sold in Vietnam was actually consumed by the Vietnamese customers. Judge Gary Katzmann deemed the domestic industry's claims as waived "due to the lack of adequate argument."
The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 6 opinion upheld parts and remanded parts of the Commerce Department's final results in the 2017-18 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on welded line pipe from South Korea. Judge Claire Kelly upheld Commerce's decisions to find there was no particular market situation in the Korean hot-rolled coil steel market, recalculate respondent Nexteel's costs without making a non-prime product adjustment and recalculate the non-examined companies' rate. The judge again sent back the agency's further explanation of its classification of Nexteel's suspended production line costs.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Dec. 5 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The U.S. and Enforce and Protect Act petitioner Texarkana Aluminum "failed to address the determinations challenged by" plaintiff AA Metals "in any meaningful way, often ignoring or misconstruing the issues" in the case and playing a "game of gotcha," AA Metals argued in a Dec. 1 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. In particular, the U.S. pushed "the same flawed analysis" from the Commerce Department's scope finding by arguing that certain [redacted] temper products are subject to the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on common alloy aluminum sheet from China (AA Metals v. United States, CIT #22-00051).
The Commerce Department improperly used adverse facts available on antidumping respondent Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Co. since the agency failed to notify the respondent about the supposed deficiencies in its submissions, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Dec. 2 opinion. Saha Thai omitted sales of line pipe from its U.S. sales database, claiming that line pipe is not within the antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Thailand. Judge Stephen Vaden found that Commerce did not notify the respondent that its sales database was deficient, remanding the use of AFA. If Commerce continues to use AFA on remand, it must ensure that it complies with the notice requirement, the judge ruled.
Importers and exporters of solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam must complete and sign certifications within the next several weeks for any entries after April 1, 2022, to avoid antidumping and countervailing duties imposed in the preliminary determination of an anti-circumvention inquiry released by the Commerce Department on Dec. 2.
If and when cannabis becomes legal to import into the U.S., there is a "high level of certainty" that a U.S. producer will complain about the fairness of the imports to the domestic industry, leading to antidumping and countervailing duty proceedings, said Adams Lee, international trade attorney at Harris Bricken, during a Dec. 1 webinar hosted by the law firm. Speaking about cannabis and international trade, Lee predicted that if imports of cannabis become legal, they will likely come from Canada -- a nation that has legalized recreational marijuana -- and diminish the market share of U.S.-made product.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Dec. 2 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Nov. 29 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):