Aluminum extrusion producer Kingtom Aluminio requested to intervene in a Court of International Trade case over an antidumping duty evasion investigation that found it transshipped aluminum extrusions from China through the Dominican Republic to skirt the duties. A previous request was denied by Judge Richard Eaton (see 2106210059). Undeterred, Kingtom filed a motion for reconsideration in the court. Eaton permitted the producer on Aug. 5 to support its motion with an affidavit by individuals who can speak to Kingtom's interests in the case along with a brief, with a maximum of 10 pages, to explain how this affidavit satisfies the requirement for intervention (Global Aluminum Distributor LLC v. United States, CIT #21-00198).
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Aug. 6 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department properly selected Mexico over Malaysia as the surrogate nation in an antidumping duty review, the Court of International Trade held in an Aug. 5 opinion. Ruling that Mexico served as a significant producer of identical merchandise and that the selection of the Mexican financial statements was backed by reasonable evidence, Judge Timothy Reif upheld Commerce's determination.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Aug. 5 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
The growth in the number of antidumping and countervailing duty orders enforced by CBP in recent years appears to be continuing, said Elizabeth Teague, an analyst at CBP, who spoke during a CBP Detroit Trade Week event on Aug. 3. "In Fiscal Year 2020, CBP began to enforce 45 new AD/CVD orders," she said. "So far in 2021, we are outpacing that number and have begun enforcing an additional 83 AD/CVD orders just this year." As of July, there were 625 active AD/CVD orders on 191 products from 59 countries, with China being the most frequently named country of origin, she said. Over half of all the AD/CVD orders involve steel or steel-related products, Teague said.
Shanxi Pioneer Hardware Industrial Co., a plaintiff in a Court of International Trade case over an antidumping administrative review on steel nails from China, will appeal the court's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, it said in an Aug. 4 notice of appeal. Judge Leo Gordon said the Commerce Department has a right to apply total adverse facts available for a mandatory respondent's failure to provide its factors of production data on a control number-specific basis in antidumping cases (see 2106090048). Shanxi was one of the three mandatory respondents for the administrative review and received a total AFA duty margin of 118.04% (Xi'An Metals Import & Export Co., Ltd. et al. v. United States, CIT #20-00103).
The Commerce Department permissibly relied on total adverse facts available in an antidumping case in light of the Court of International Trade's orders, the Department of Justice argued in July 30 final comments on Commerce's remand results. The respondent, Hung Vuong Group, attempted to submit new factual information in the case before the remand was filed, but no such authority exists for this submission to be accepted, DOJ said (Hung Vuong Corp., et al. v. United States, CIT #19-00055).
The Commerce Department unlawfully selected Malaysia as its surrogate country in an antidumping duty administrative review and the decision should be remanded by the Court of International Trade for reconsideration of selecting Romania instead, plaintiffs in a case challenging the review said in July 30 comments opposing the first remand results. Seeing as the remand itself recognizes the superiority of the Romanian data and acknowledges certain input data from Malaysia is aberrational, the court should hold that Commerce's reliance on Malaysia as the surrogate nation is unlawful, the plaintiffs said (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co., Ltd. et al. v. United States, CIT #20-00007).
The Court of International Trade sustained the final determination in the administrative review of the antidumping duty order on chlorinated isocyanurates from China in an Aug. 5 opinion. Plaintiffs Heze Huayi Chemical Co. and Juancheng Kangtai Chemical Co. launched their challenge to contest the selection of Mexico over Malaysia as a surrogate nation for calculating the AD duty, to find that Mexico has the highest quality information and to adjust the Mexican "freight-on-board" values to a "cost of insurance and freight" mark. For all three contentions, Judge Timothy Reif sided with the government, finding that Mexico is a "significant producer" of "comparable merchandise," that its selection of the Mexican conglomerate CYDSA's financial statements was backed by substantial evidence and that the adjustment of the data to a CIF basis was permitted.