The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Aug. 30-31 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The Florida Tomato Exchange, plaintiff in a case challenging an antidumping duty suspension agreement, moved to voluntarily drop its case, in an Aug. 29 motion at the Court of International Trade. The case was stayed pending resolution of another similar challenge led by Jem D. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the trade court's dismissal of the Jem D case, which included a challenge to the termination of the 2013 suspension agreement over imports of fresh tomatoes from Mexico (The Florida Tomato Exchange v. United States, CIT #13-00148).
Three separate lawsuits at the Court of International Trade are challenging the results of the Commerce Department's eighth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China. All three suits allege Commerce made errors in its calculations and choice of data, particularly its surrogate values, during the review.
The Commerce Department properly reversed its reliance on adverse facts available in an antidumping duty review, lowering the dumping rate for respondent BlueScope Steel from 99.20% to 4.95%, the Court of International Trade ruled in an Aug. 30 opinion. Commerce dropped the use of AFA from the review after issuing a supplemental questionnaire to BlueScope to get U.S. sales quantity and value reporting data from the respondent.
Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The Court of International Trade in an Aug. 26 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a case over the 2016-17 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on oil country tubular goods from South Korea. In the remand results, Commerce reversed its decisions finding that a particular market situation existed for a key input of the OCTG products, and adjusting respondent Nexteel Co.'s reported costs for the value of non-prime products at their sales price and allocating the difference between the full production cost and market value of the non-prime products to the production costs of the prime OCTG.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate on Aug. 29, following its ruling that the Commerce Department can use total adverse facts available to calculate the all-others rate in an antidumping duty review on steel nails from China. The appellate court said that while the law bars the use of total AFA when calculating the all-others rate in AD investigations, it makes no mention of AD reviews, so the question is deferred to Commerce (see 2207060027). The appellate court said Commerce was right to use partial AFA on respondent Dezhou Hualude Hardware Products due to its main supplier's transshipment scheme (Shanxi Hairui Trade Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-2067).
The Commerce Department violated the law by hitting mandatory antidumping review respondent Grupo Simec with a total adverse facts available rate of 66.70%, non-selected respondent Grupo Acerero argued in an Aug. 26 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The total AFA rate was disproportionate since Grupo Simec put forth "significant effort" in responding to Commerce's questionnaires, the brief said. Grupo Acerero further railed against its own 33.35% rate that was found by simply averaging the total AFA rate and a zero percent rate given to the other mandatory respondent (Grupo Acerero v. U.S., CIT #22-00230).
The Court of International Trade in an Aug. 29 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's decision to reverse its finding that a particular market situation existed for an input of oil country tubular goods in South Korea. The court previously remanded the PMS determination as being unsupported by substantial evidence. The agency then flipped its finding, prompting Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves to sustain the remand results. Previously, the judge also sent back Commerce's use of the Cohen's d test to root out masked dumping, but since respondent SeAH Steel Corp. was given a de minimis dumping margin, the issue was moot.
The Commerce Department cannot select just one mandatory respondent in an antidumping review where multiple exporters have requested a review, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in an Aug. 29 nonprecedential opinion. Reversing the Court of International Trade's finding, judges Pauline Newman, Alvin Schall and Sharon Prost said Commerce's interpretation of the statute finding that it can use only one respondent runs "contrary to the statute's unambiguous language." The judges ruled the agency has not shown it to be otherwise reasonable to calculate the all-others rate based on only one respondent and said the directive to find a weighted average gives no reason why it's reasonable to use only a single rate.