The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade should refuse to consolidate a challenge to the International Trade Commission's affirmative injury finding on hot-rolled steel flat products from Australia with a challenge to the commission's negative injury determination on the same goods from Brazil, the U.S. argued. The government claimed that there are no overlapping issues in the proceedings and that "consolidation would complicate briefing as well as the Court's review of the determinations." The Australia and Brazil cases challenge different determinations, so the present dispute is not the same as respondents and petitioners making opposing arguments on the same Commerce Department dumping margin, the U.S. said. The government was joined in its opposition to consolidation by U.S. steel companies Cleveland-Cliffs, Nucor Corp., Steel Dynamics, SSAB Enterprises and U.S. Steel Corp. (BlueScope Steel v. United States, CIT # 22-00353).
The Commerce Department did not adequately explain its finding that ship building company Nur Gemicilik ve Tic, an affiliate of countervailing duty respondent Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret, was a cross-owned input supplier of primarily dedicated inputs, the Court of International Trade ruled. Sending back the 2018 administrative review of the CVD order on rebar from Turkey, Judge Gary Katzmann said Commerce erroneously relied on prior segments of the review and a past CIT decision to say that "scrap" is an input primarily dedicated to the production of downstream steel products.
Steel importers led by PrimeSource Building Products petitioned for an en banc rehearing of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's decision to uphold President Donald Trump's expansion of the Section 232 national security tariffs on steel and aluminum "derivative" products. The companies said that if the decision stands, the president "will enjoy unbounded legislative power to regulate foreign trade -- to take any action, at any time, targeting any imported product," as long as the commerce secretary makes a threat determination on the targeted product or any material used to make that product (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2066).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department legally relied on respondents Allied Natural Product's and Ambrosia Natural Products (India)'s raw honey acquisition costs as a proxy to calculate cost of production in the antidumping duty investigation into raw honey from India, the respondents argued in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Issuing the brief as a supplement to the government's claims, Allied and Ambrosia added that, contrary to petitioner American Honey Producers Association's claims, Commerce did not use the beekepeers' and "middlemen" suppliers' costs as "benchmarks" for setting the cost of honey (American Honey Producers Association v. U.S., CIT # 22-00195).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld CBP's decision not to grant credit to customs broker license exam test taker Byungmin Chae of Elkhorn, Nebraska, for two questions on the April 2018 exam. Judges Pauline Newman, Sharon Prost and Todd Hughes granted Chae credit for one of three questions he challenged, but that was insufficient to bring him up to the 75% threshold needed to pass the test.
The Commerce Department has the statutory authority to conduct expedited countervailing duty reviews, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held April 25. Reversing a Court of International Trade ruling overturning the agency's authority to carry out such reviews, Judges Timothy Dyk, Jimmie Reyna and Richard Taranto said the legal ground for the review process is found in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act's enactment of certain provisions that favor individual company determinations and the URAA's "grant of regulatory-implementation power to Commerce."
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Appellants Sigma Corp. and Smith-Cooper International rely too much on industry jargon to argue Vandewater International's steel branch outlets are not butt-welded and aren't subject to the antidumping duty order on butt-weld pipe fittings from China, the U.S. argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The government said that "a wide array of record evidence contradicts" Sigma and SCI's "core" claim that the term "butt-weld" has a single, unambiguous meaning excluding welded outlets from the scope (Vandewater International v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1093).