The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 29 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
Defendant-intervenors and antidumping case petitioners, led by Catfish Farmers of America, filed comments to remand results in the Court of International Trade on July 28 in a case over an antidumping review on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam. Having already submitted comments on the remand (see 2107160018), the catfish farmers added final comments, arguing that Commerce's continued reliance on total adverse facts available is properly supported by findings "already affirmed by the court," and that Commerce fully addressed the issues remanded by the court despite no longer relying on them (Hung Vuong Corporation, et al. v. United States, CIT #19-00055).
The Commerce Department's use of Thai surrogate data in two antidumping administrative reviews of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China was not properly supported, the Court of International Trade said in two nearly identical July 28 decisions. Judge Claire Kelly, penning the opinions, sought to bring Commerce's practice in line with a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision that called unreasonable the agency's “bookend methodology” in selecting the surrogate data. Stopping short of instructing Commerce to cease its use of the Thai data, Kelly found that the agency's rationale was unsupported and remanded the surrogate value selection for further consideration or explanation.
Costa Rica requested dispute consultations with the Dominican Republic over antidumping duties on corrugated steel bars from Costa Rica, a July 27 World Trade Organization notice said. Costa Rica said the DR's antidumping measures are incompatible with obligations under the Anti-Dumping Agreement and the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 28 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department should have disregarded petitioners' claims in a countervailing duty investigation on silicon metal from Kazakhstan, said sole respondent to the investigation Tau-Ken Temir in a July 21 brief in the Court of International Trade. The petitioners' conflict of interest claim "lacked merit, not even colorable merit," to the extent that Commerce should have found the petitioners were interfering in the investigation, TKT said. The exporter seeks to have the court throw out Commerce's rejection of its questionnaire responses (Tau-Ken Temir LLP et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00173).
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Court of International Trade Judge Claire Kelly remanded the Commerce Department's use of surrogate data from Thailand in two antidumping administrative reviews into crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China in two nearly identical July 28 rulings. The judge sought to bring the cases in line with a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision that found that Commerce's methodology was unreasonable. Commerce improperly continued to use Thai import data as a surrogate for data on a key input of the solar cells, Kelly said.
The Commerce Department's use of a simple average to calculate a pooled standard deviation as part of the differential pricing analysis in an antidumping duty case was reasonable and permitted under the statute, the U.S. and Mid Continent Steel & Wire said in reply briefs to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Responding to the opening brief filed by the appellants, led by PT Enterprise, both the government and Mid Continent argued that the "academic literature" backed the use of simple averages and that PT's proposed method of weighing the averages cut against the science (Mid Continent Steel & Wire, Inc. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1747).