The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade in a confidential June 9 opinion remanded the Commerce Department's final determination in the antidumping duty investigation on biodiesel from Indonesia. In the investigation, Commerce disregarded exporter Wilmar Bioenergi Indonesia's home market sales and nearly all of its reported costs due to a particular market situation in Indonesia. The agency said the PMS existed based on a Public Service Obligation program that requires biodiesel producers to sell a certain amount of biodiesel in Indonesia at a market-set price. Commerce also found a PMS for Wilmar's crude palm oil costs based on the Indonesian government's export tax and export levy on CPO, which lowers its cost. In a letter filed about the confidential opinion, Judge Richard Eaton gave the parties until June 16 to review any confidential information (Wilmar Trading Pte Ltd. v. United States, CIT #18-00121).
The Commerce Department in June 9 remand results filed at the Court of International Trade no longer found that a particular market situation existed in India regarding the price of hot-rolled coil. Making the switch under protest, Commerce said that since it found that a PMS no longer exists, the other remanded issues in the case are moot (Garg Tube Export v. United States, CIT #20-00026).
The Court of International Trade should dismiss an importer's lawsuit that improperly challenges CBP assessments of antidumping and countervailing duties rather than the underlying duty calculations done by the Commerce Department, the government said in a June 8 brief. The trade court lacks jurisdiction to entertain the complaint because the true nature of importer Rimco's claim is a challenge to the amount of duties determined by Commerce rather than the enforcement by CBP, DOJ said. The protest and subsequent suit are an attempt to "hide its own failure to challenge Commerce's determinations when it had the opportunity" by essentially circumventing administrative avenues for addressing AD/CVD rate calculations, the government said (Rimco v. United States, CIT #21-00537).
The Court of International Trade in a June 9 opinion denied Indian exporter Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited's (GFL's) bid for injunctive relief against liquidation and paying cash deposits from a countervailing duty investigation. Judge Timothy Stanceu ruled that the plaintiff failed to show that it would likely face harm without the preliminary injunction since the company failed to show that future refunds of excess cash deposits would be an "inadequate remedy." As for the injunction on liquidation, the court said that there's no draft order in "satisfactory form" that could allow the court to issue the standard injunction against liquidation. However, Stanceu gave the plaintiff 30 days to renew the injunction bid.
The Court of International Trade in a May 31 opinion made public June 10 sustained the Commerce Department's final results in the administrative review of the antidumping duty order on hot-rolled steel flat products from Australia. The U.S. Steel Corporation filed the case to argue that exporter BlueScope Steel (AIS) reimbursed the affiliated importer BlueScope Steel Americas for the antidumping duties paid on the subject entries by decreasing the invoice price by the amount of the duties, and that Commerce should've deducted from the exporter's U.S. price because of it. Judge Richard Eaton said this was a "garden variety transaction among an exporter, an importer, and an unaffiliated purchaser," and that no evidence was presented that would prove the importer was reimbursed.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices June 9 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department improperly relied on the Cohen's d statistical test when deciding to use an "average-to-transaction" as opposed to an "average-to-average" comparison of sales to calculate exporter HiSteel's dumping margin, HiSteel argued in a June 8 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Commerce used the test without establishing the conditions needed to make the test work as pointed out in a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case, the exporter said (HiSteel Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00142).
The Commerce Department "lawfully and reasonably" found that Australian exporter BlueScope Steel (AIS) didn't reimburse BlueScope Steel Americas (BSA) -- the U.S. affiliate for BlueScope Steel -- for antidumping duties on the relevant imports, the U.S. argued in a June 7 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Contrary to plaintiff U.S. Steel's contention, Commerce properly concluded that AIS's pricing arrangement wasn't evidence of reimbursement for the duties because the agency no longer deducts from U.S. price any indirect reimbursement of antidumping duties, the brief said (U.S. Steel v. U.S., CIT #21-00528).