The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Consolidated plaintiff, defendant-intervenor and Canadian lumber company Fontaine will appeal an August Court of International Trade opinion to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, it said in an Oct. 15 notice of appeal. The decision vacated a Commerce Department regulation establishing expedited reviews for countervailing duty investigations (see 2108190002). Following four opinions from CIT, the trade court eventually found that it could not find any statutory basis for the regulations. Another consolidated plaintiff and defendant-intervenor, Mobilier Rustique (Beauce) Inc., has appealed the decision (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations, et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #19-00122).
The Court of International Trade granted a preliminary injunction against the liquidation of Chinese exporter Dalian Meisen Woodworking Co.'s wood cabinet and vanity entries, in an Oct. 18 order. Although Meisen filed for the PI after the 30-day period to move for an injunction, the court accepted its PI bid since the exporter showed good cause as to why the delay was necessary (Dalian Meisen Woodworking Co., Ltd. v. U.S., CIT #20-00110).
The Commerce Department fixed an error in its liquidation instructions related to an antidumping duty review in its Oct. 15 remand results at the Court of International Trade. The remand was voluntarily requested by Commerce after it identified the error in the liquidation restrictions (Optima Steel International, LLC, et al. v. U.S., CIT #21-00327).
The Court of International Trade should grant the Commerce Department's voluntary request for a remand in an antidumping case, so the agency can review whether it was appropriate to rely on supplemental questionnaire responses, seeing as it couldn't conduct an on-site verification, Commerce argued in an Oct. 18 brief (Ellwood City Forge Company, et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00007).
The Court of International Trade issued two opinions in antidumping cases, one sustaining the Commerce Department's remand results, and another remanding certain issues back to the agency. The first decision concerned a challenge brought by Husteel to the 2016-17 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea. As it has done many times before, the court had initially remanded Commerce's decision to make a particular market situation adjustment to Husteel's sales-below-cost test. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said this adjustment is not permissible under the law, so Commerce dropped it under protest, leading the judge to sustain the remand.
The World Trade Organization on Oct. 15 published the agenda for the next meeting of the Dispute Settlement Body, set to be held Oct. 26. Agenda items include reviewing the status of implementation of recommendations adopted by the body, with the U.S. providing a status report on the following: its antidumping measures on certain hot-rolled steel products from Japan; Section 110 (5) of the U.S. Copyright Act; its antidumping and countervailing duties on large residential washers from South Korea; and certain of its methodologies and their application to antidumping proceedings involving China. Also, the DSB will discuss the U.S.'s Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000, along with a statement by the European Union related to it; and a U.S. statement on the implementation of the recommendations of the DSB regarding measures affecting trade in large civil aircraft. Also, the body will take up a request by Australia for the establishment of a panel on China's antidumping and countervailing duty measures on Australian wine.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Oct. 18 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
The Commerce Department switched to finding the all-others rate in an antidumping duty review using a weighted average of the respondents' rates rather than a simple average, in Oct. 13 remand results at the Court of International Trade. Still defending its use of the simple average in other hypothetical circumstances, Commerce nevertheless made the switch to weighted average, using CBP entry data for one of the respondents (Pro-Team Coil Nail Enterprise, Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #18-00027).
The Commerce Department found that a countervailing duty investigation respondent's U.S. customers did not use China's Export Buyer's Credit Program in the investigation's final determination despite the Chinese government's continued failure to provide information, indicating a potential shift in how the agency will approach how it verifies non-use of the program.