The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 15 on AD/CVD proceedings:
CBP’s reversal in an antidumping and countervailing duty evasion case at the Court of International Trade case puts the agency’s entire Enforce and Protect Act program “in jeopardy,” the domestic industry group Aluminum Extruders Council said in a blog post July 13.
The U.S. on July 14 appeared in a case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over whether the Commerce Department has the statutory authority to conduct expedited countervailing duty reviews. The court in June invited the U.S. to file an amicus brief after it failed to appear to that point (see 2206100045). In response, Elizabeth Speck at DOJ asked the court for another 92 days to file the amicus brief, filing an unopposed motion for extension of time. In the brief, Speck said that the additional 92 days is necessary since the U.S. has decided not to participate in the appeal.
Importer and U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese manufacturing company, Wanxiang America Corp. is guilty of negligence by making false statements and omissions over its entries of wheel hub assemblies, radial ball and tapered roller bearings, and universal joints and their parts, the U.S. argued in a July 13 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Through its negligence, Wanxiang America avoided antidumping duties and customs duties on its entries, cheating the U.S. out of over $31 million in lost revenue, the U.S. said. DOJ filed its case to seek the lost duty payments along with a penalty (United States v. Wanxiang America Corporation, CIT #22-00205).
The Court of International Trade in a July 14 opinion said that the Commerce Department properly rejected countervailing duty respondent Tau-Ken Temir's questionnaire response as being untimely because it was filed an hour and 41 minutes late. In the CVD investigation on silicon metal from Kazakhstan, counsel for TKT was experiencing computer problems and submitted an extension request an hour and 10 minutes before the filing deadline. Gordon upheld Commerce's rejection of this request, holding that it is not clear why the plaintiffs didn't file an extension earlier and that the respondent didn't put forth a maximum effort to give Commerce the requested information by the deadline.
The Court of International Trade issued a pair of opinions on July 15. In one, Judge Timothy Stanceu sent back the Commerce Department's final results in the administrative review of the antidumping duty order on welded steel pipe products from the United Arab Emirates. Stanceu ruled that Commerce's decision to deny plaintiffs, led by Universal Tube and Plastic Industries, a level-of-trade adjustment was based on unsatisfactory analysis "when viewed according to the statutory criteria and the record evidence on the whole."
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 14 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Plaintiffs Garg Tube Export and Garg Tube Limited signed off on the Commerce Department's reversal of its finding that a particular market situation existed in India related to the price of hot-rolled coil in an antidumping duty review (see 2206090067). Submitting comments on Commerce's remand results at the Court of International Trade, Garg said that it "fully supports" the finding that no PMS existed. The result, if sustained, would be a decrease in Garg's margin to zero percent. The case concerns the 2017-18 administrative review of the AD duty order on welded carbon steel standard pipes and tubes from India. In the second court opinion in the case, the trade court ruled that Commerce failed to show how certain market phenomena gave rise to a unique set of facts distorting the cost of materials or other processing such that Garg's cost of production isn't within the normal course of trade (see 2203230018) (Garg Tube Export and Garg Tube Limited v. United States, CIT #20-00026).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dismissed four appeals over whether the Commerce Department can make a particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test when determining normal value in antidumping duty proceedings. The appellant in each case, AD petitioner Wheatland Tube, voluntarily moved to dismiss the cases after it didn't petition the Supreme Court to hear a key case, Hyundai Steel v. U.S. In that decision, the Federal Circuit said the statute doesn't permit Commerce to make a PMS adjustment to the sales-below-cost test (see 2112100039). Wheatland subsequently dropped all of its appeals on the subject except for one, which it argued should be continued even in light of the Hyundai Steel decision (see 2207120072). The court, in a series of three orders, dismissed four of the appeals and lifted the stay in the remaining one (Saha Thai Steel Pipe v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #22-1172, #22-1173, #22-1174) (Husteel v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #22-1300).