The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices June 14 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The Commerce Department should obtain all ex parte communications from the White House involving President Joe Biden's recent decision to temporarily suspend antidumping and countervailing duties on solar cells from four Southeast Asian nations, U.S. solar company Auxin Solar said in a June 9 letter to Commerce. Suspecting that the White House made the decision after consulting with stakeholders, Auxin said that the law requires all ex parte communications to be placed on the record.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate on June 13 in an antidumping case over the Commerce Department's differential pricing analysis. In the case's opinion, the Federal Circuit said that Commerce must reconsider its decision to use a simple average to calculate the pooled standard deviation when using the Cohen's d test in the DPA to target "masked dumping" (see 2204210031). Ruling that Commerce strayed from the statistical literature without a proper explanation, Judges Pauline Newman, Alan Lourie and Richard Taranto said the agency should reconsider whether a weighted average for calculating the Cohen's d denominator is more appropriate (Mid Continent Steel & Wire v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1747).
The Commerce Department erred by rejecting the Coalition of American Manufacturers of Mobile Access Equipment's surrogate data for ocean freight along with a host of inputs for mobile access equipment, the coalition said in a June 13 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The coalition argued that its own surrogate value data "more accurately reflected the inputs" used than the data Commerce did end up using (Coalition of American Manufacturers of Mobile Access Equipment v. United States, CIT #22-00152).
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers filed an amicus brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in a case over whether Japanese manufacturer Sigma Corporation, along with other companies, is guilty of violating the False Claims Act for not paying antidumping duties. The two trade groups argued that businesses that act consistently with a reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous regulation lack the "requisite False Claims Act scienter" and that the district court should have said there was no obligation to pay the duties given that the duties are not owed on the imports at issue (Island Industries, et al. v. Sigma Corporation, 9th Cir. # 22-55063).
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Plaintiffs in an antidumping case failed to exhaust their administrative remedies when challenging the Commerce Department's decision to issue a questionnaire in lieu of on-site verification due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, the Court of International Trade ruled in a June 14 opinion. Judge Stephen Vaden said that the AD petitioner, Ellwood City Forge Co., had "multiple opportunities" to counter the verification methodology, but failed to do so administratively.
The Court of International Trade in a June 15 opinion sustained parts and sent back parts of the Commerce Department's remand results over the antidumping duty review of circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea. In the case's most recent remand, Commerce dropped a particular market situation adjustment to the cost of production for mandatory respondent Hyundai Steel but kept the adjustment to the other mandatory respondent Husteel's normal value when calculating non-examined respondent SeAH Steel's rate. In the opinion, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves sustained the PMS adjustment drop for Hyundai but remanded the PMS adjustment as it pertains to SeAH's rate.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a June 15 opinion affirmed the Court of International Trade's ruling in an anti-circumvention inquiry on hardwood plywood from China. The trade court sustained the Commerce Department's ruling that certain hardwood plywood was commercially available before Dec. 8, 2016, and did not constitute later-developed merchandise that circumvented the antidumping and countervailing duty orders. The appellate court ruled this decision was properly made and said the record reflects the availability of the merchandise before the orders.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices June 14 on AD/CVD proceedings: