The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Nov. 19 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Nov. 18 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):
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department's surrogate financial ratio calculation in an antidumping duty case, while better explained, is not the most accurate calculation and thus does not comply with the law or the Court of International Trade's order, plaintiff Ancientree Cabinet Co. argued in a Nov. 12 brief at CIT. Further, the particular methodology Commerce used also doesn't jibe with the agency's past methodology and reasoning in other AD reviews, the brief said (The Ancientree Cabinet Co., Ltd. v. United States, CIT # 20-00114).
The Court of International Trade sustained Nov. 18 the Commerce Department's remand results in a case involving a scope revision in an antidumping and countervailing duty investigation on steel trailer wheels from China. After previously sustaining the scope revision itself but remanding the retroactive imposition of the duties on subject merchandise, Judge Gary Katzmann then sustained Commerce's redetermination after it dropped the retroactive duties.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Nov. 18 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
The Commerce Department improperly rejected a first-in-first-out (FIFO) methodology used by an Indonesian mattress exporter to determine which of the exporter’s U.S. inventory to examine in an antidumping duty investigation on mattresses from Indonesia, the exporter said in a brief filed with the Court of International Trade Nov. 9.
The Commerce Department has the authority to modify the scope of an antidumping duty investigation in response to evidence of evasion to ensure that the ultimate order "provides an effective remedy," the Department of Justice argued in a Nov. 12 brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. DOJ also backed the actual scope decision at issue in the case itself, asserting it was based on substantial evidence that showed Chinese companies were planning to use the original crushed glass exclusion to evade Commerce's AD/CVD orders on quartz-glass product (M S International, Inc., et al. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1679).
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in two cases over a scope ruling in the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations into steel trailer wheels from China. After previously sustaining the scope revision itself but remanding the retroactive imposition of the duties from the date of the preliminary determination in the investigations, Judge Gary Katzmann then sustained Commerce's redetermination after it dropped the retroactive duties. One opinion was in a case over the antidumping investigation, and the other was in a case over the countervailing duty investigation.
The fact that an antidumping respondent used false advertising about what its products are made of is immaterial to the AD investigation over those products, the Court of International Trade said in a Nov. 18 opinion, rejecting the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available. During the investigation into wooden cabinets and vanities from China, Commerce discovered that respondent Dalian Meisen Woodworking Co. advertised its products as made of maple when they were actually made of birch, prompting Commerce to use AFA. But since Meisen complied with Commerce proceedings and the agency doesn't have the ability under the AD statutes to "police false advertising violations," the court held that the agency can't apply AFA and must use Meisen's actual information to calculate its dumping rate.