The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Oct. 13 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
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Judge Timothy Reif issued lengthy remand instructions Oct. 12 to the Commerce Department over its application of adverse facts available over China's Export Buyer's Credit Program in a countervailing duty review, citing the scene in the movie Philadelphia in which Denzel Washington's character asks Tom Hanks' character to explain something to him as he would to a two-year old.
The Court of International Trade on Oct. 12 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in the 14th administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain frozen fish fillets from Vietnam. After previously remanding Commerce's application of adverse facts available for lack of substantial evidence, Judge Miller Baker sustained the AFA application after Commerce switched out the grounds on which it based its AFA finding. Initially, Commerce applied AFA based on the respondent's reporting failures related to customer relationships and factors of production reporting issues, but now bases the finding to the respondent's failure to maintain source documents and control number reporting issues.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Oct. 12 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate Oct. 8 in a case involving the Commerce Department's use of the "Cohen's d test" to discover targeted or masked dumping. The mandate led the Court of International Trade to remand the case to Commerce to bring its final results in an antidumping investigation into welded line pipe from South Korea in line with the Federal Circuit's opinion. The appellate court held that Commerce must further explain its use of this statistical test when using its differential pricing analysis since Commerce may not be adhering to certain assumptions required to perform the Cohen's d test (see 2107150032). A proposed briefing schedule decided by all parties is due by Oct. 28 (Stupp Corporation et al. v. U.S., et al., CAFC # 2020-1857).
The Court of International Trade entered partial judgment in a case over the antidumping duty investigation into Chinese quartz surface product in an Oct. 8 order. Having issued a partial decision in September, Judge Leo Gordon said that the remaining issue under litigation is separate from the already-ruled aspects of the case. In September, Gordon upheld the Commerce Department's decision to pick Mexico over Malaysia as a surrogate country for the purposes of calculating normal value in the AD case (see 2109270059). The remaining issue, brought by M S International, concerns whether Commerce had the requisite industry support to initiate the investigation -- an issue for which the court just sided with Commerce in a separate antidumping case (see 2110080035).
The Commerce Department properly found that it had enough industry support to initiate antidumping and countervailing duty investigations into quartz surface products (QSP) from India, the Court of International Trade said in an Oct. 7 decision. Issuing a partial opinion in the case solely to address the concerns of M S International (MSI), Judge Leo Gordon said that Commerce legally interpreted "producers" of QSPs as excluding QSP fabricators.
The Court of International Trade remanded the Commerce Department's final results in the administrative review of the countervailing duty order on certain passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China covering entries from 2017, in an Oct. 12 order. Commerce, as it has done many times before, applied adverse facts available relating to its inability to verify non-use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program by the two mandatory respondents' U.S. customers. Judge Timothy Reif issued lengthy remand orders to Commerce, instructing the agency, for instance, to explain how one of the respondent's questionnaire statements showing its non-use of the program are unverifiable by describing Commerce's step-by-step methodology for verifying non-use.
An alleged transshipper in an antidumping and countervailing duty evasion investigation was allowed to intervene in a case at the Court of International Trade, per an Oct. 7 order. Kingtom Aluminio was originally denied the right to intervene for failing to show a legally protectable interest in the case. Judge Richard Eaton changed his tune in the most recent order, now agreeing that the company has a protectable interest.