Two recent Court of International Trade decisions are relevant to a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case over whether the Commerce Department properly refused to apply the finished goods exclusion to certain solar panel mounts, plaintiff-appellants China Custom Manufacturing and Greentec Engineering said in a Jan. 3 notice of supplemental authority. The CIT decisions, Columbia Aluminum Products v. U.S. and Worldwide Door Components v. U.S., excluded door threshold assemblies with aluminum extrusions from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China as finished merchandise. The appellants said the decisions addressed arguments made in the present appeal (China Custom Manufacturing v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-1345).
The Commerce Department properly tapped India as the primary surrogate country in an antidumping duty review on frozen fish filets from Vietnam, the U.S. argued in a Jan. 3 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Responding to arguments from Catfish Farmers of America vying for Indonesia to be the primary surrogate country, the government said that these claims do not undermine the choice of India and at most just seek to include Indonesia in the list of countries under consideration for the primary surrogate country (Catfish Farmers of America, et al. v. United States, CIT # 20-00105).
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 3 order granted importer WKW North America's stipulation of dismissal with prejudice in its case on the Commerce Department's finished merchandise exemption from antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China (WKW North America v. United States, CIT # 21-00072).
Importer Kyocera Document Solutions America will get refunds on Section 301 duties paid for its printer maintenance kits that were granted a tariff exclusion by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The importer filed a stipulated judgment at the Court of International Trade on an agreed set of facts, which say that the maintenance kits, liquidated under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 8443.99.2050 and assessed Section 301 tariffs under secondary subheading 9903.88.01, fit under the exclusion.
CBP's remand results in an antiumping and countervailing duty evasion case should be sent back again since the agency "failed to provide any reasoned explanation for its treatment of confidential information or for the public summarization of such information," plaintiff Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Enforcement Committee said in a Jan. 3 brief at the Court of International Trade (Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Enforcement Committee v. United States, CIT # 21-00129).
The Commerce Department illegally failed to give exporter Goodluck India a chance to request a review after it was reinstated as subject to an antidumping duty order, Goodluck argued in a Jan. 3 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade. After the trade court settled a jurisdictional issue in the case, the exporter in a new motion for judgment argued that Commerce violated the law by assessing duties at the adverse facts available rate and deciding that the AFA cash deposit rate became effective on Sept. 10, 2021 -- 10 days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit provisionally revoked the order as to Goodluck (Goodluck India Limited v. United States, CIT # 22-00024).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Dec. 29 order granted the U.S. motion for leave to file a motion to dismiss an Enforce and Protect Act appeal to the extent the motion must be filed within 14 days. The U.S. asked for leave to file the motion seeing as all the entries at issue have been liquidated (Royal Brush Manufacturing v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1226).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Dec. 30 order gave plaintiff-appellants in a countervailing duty case a two-week extension to file their opening brief, setting the due date at Jan. 17. The appellants, Tau-Ken Temir, Kazakhstan's Ministry of Trade and Integration, and Tau-Ken Samruk, requested the extension -- the second of its kind for the opening brief -- since their counsel, Peter Koenig of Squire Patton, got hit with "two new unanticipated large questionnaire responses due at the" Commerce Department and "two new briefs due at" CIT since the first extension request. Koenig said more time is needed to coordinate a single brief among the three appellants, especially given that one is a foreign government agency (Tau-Ken Temir v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2204).
The Commerce Department illegally ignored its established practice of not reviewing the countervailability of a program in the absence of new information and its "consistent finding" in all past countervailing duty reviews that no benefit was provided from respondent KG Dongbu Steel Co.'s first three debt-equity swaps, Dongbu argued in a Dec. 27 reply brief at the Court of International Trade (KG Dongbu Steel Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00047).