CBP announced the launch of an Enforce and Protect Act investigation and the imposition of “interim measures” on BGI Group for alleged evasion of antidumping and countervailing duties on wooden cabinets and vanities by way of transshipment through Vietnam, the agency said in a recent notice. CBP will suspend liquidation and require cash deposits as of March 26, 2021, for entries from Vietnam from the BGI Group, which does business as U.S. Cabinet Depot.
The Court of International Trade rejected the Commerce Department's rationale for applying a particular market situation adjustment to a sales-below-cost test in an antidumping case, in a July 19 opinion. Having repeatedly ruled that no such adjustment can be made, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves remanded the results in the 2015-16 administrative review of the antidumping order on circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea for the third time. Judge Choe-Groves held that the statute instructs Commerce to only make PMS adjustments when calculating constructed value in an AD case and to only use sales in the “ordinary course of trade” when establishing normal value. Since PMS sales are not within the ordinary course of trade, they should be dropped from a normal value calculation rather than used to adjust the cost of production, she said.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 16 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
Steel producer Nucor Tubular Products Inc. will appeal a June 24 Court of International Trade opinion to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, according to a July 15 notice of appeal. The decision sustained the Commerce Department's decision to drop a particular market situation adjustment to the cost of production for South Korean steel in an antidumping review (see 2106240028). In particular, the case, originally brought by Dong-A Steel Co., concerns the 2016-17 antidumping administrative review of heavy walled rectangular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from South Korea. The case marked yet another instance of the PMS determination having been made on insufficient evidence since Commerce used "substantially the same record evidence" (Dong-A Steel Company v. United States, CIT #19-00104).
The Commerce Department must further explain its use of a statistical test when using its differential pricing analysis in an antidumping duty investigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a July 15 opinion. Partially remanding an antidumping investigation into welded line pipe from South Korea, the Federal Circuit questioned Commerce's use of the "Cohen's d test" to discover targeted or masked dumping.
The following new requests for antidumping and countervailing duty scope rulings were recently filed with the Commerce Department:
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 15 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
Steel wheels imported by Rimco for passenger vehicle and light truck use are not subject to antidumping and countervailing duties on steel wheels 12 to 16.5 inches in diameter from China (A-570-090/C-570-091), the Commerce Department said in a July 9 scope ruling. There is no indication that the wheels are meant for trailer applications, which the AD/CVD orders are intended to cover, the agency said. And Rimco’s wheels, though 16 inches in diameter, “can be differentiated from subject merchandise by examining hub bore size, offset, and load rating,” it said. “This reflects differences between trailer wheels and passenger vehicle/light truck wheels noted in the Petition and the underlying investigations of the Orders.”
The Commerce Department wants a partial remand of its final determination in a countervailing duty investigation on utility scale wind towers from Indonesia, to reconsider whether it erroneously identified an upstream subsidy in the case as an export subsidy. In a July 9 motion for partial remand in the Court of International Trade, the government defense said that it wants the chance to review this determination to see if an error was committed and to potentially recalculate the resulting countervailing duty rate for the plaintiff in the case, PT. Kenertec Power System, which received the all-other respondents rate in the investigation (PT. Kenertec Power System v. United States, CIT #20-03687).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a Court of International Trade ruling dismissing an importer's challenge of CBP's assessment of antidumping and countervailing duties, for improper jurisdiction, in a July 14 opinion. The Federal Circuit found that TR International Trading Company, which filed its case under the trade court's Section 1581(i) "residual" jurisdiction provision, could have instead challenged a denied protest under 1581(a) or a scope ruling under 1581(c), rendering Section 1581(i) unavailable.