DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission settled a case against Lithionics Battery and its founder and owner, Steven Tartaglia, accusing them of falsely claiming that their battery and battery module products were made in the U.S., DOJ announced May 4. Lithionics and Tartaglia agreed to pay $105,319.56 in civil penalties (U.S. v. Lithionics Battery, M.D. Fla. #8:22-00868).
The U.S. urged the Court of International Trade to sustain the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping duty case accepting minutes-late submissions, given that no party filed comments opposing the remand. Submitting its May 5 comments at CIT, DOJ said Commerce fully followed court instructions in accepting the late submissions and reverting to partial adverse facts available rather than full AFA (Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi v. U.S., CIT #21-00045).
The Court of International Trade should disregard the government's motion to dismiss steel importer Rimco's challenge to the antidumping and countervailing duties it paid, Rimco argued in a May 4 reply brief. Since the importer's case is really a constitutional challenge over excessive fines, Rimco argued that it properly filed its action as a response to CBP's assessment of the AD/CVD rather than the Commerce Department's calculations of the duties (Rimco v. United States, CIT #21-00537).
The Commerce Department properly found that Indian exporter Uttam Galva failed to report an affiliated cross-owned company in a countervailing duty proceeding, warranting the use of adverse facts available and a 588.43% CVD rate, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a May 5 opinion. Judges Sharon Prost, Richard Taranto and Raymond Chen said the exporter didn't show that the affiliated company's financial statement could rebut the inclusion of 20 subsidy programs supposedly given to it, permitting the subsidies' inclusion in Uttam Galva's rate.
Judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, namely Chief Judge Kimberly Moore, expressed doubt over exporter Shanxi Hairui Trade Co.'s argument that the Commerce Department should have excluded an adverse facts available rate when calculating the all-others rate in the relevant administrative review. Moore said at a May 3 oral argument that she thought Commerce articulated its decision on "sound, clear, rational bases" especially given the "gamesmanship" going on the sampling process (Shanxi Hairui Trade Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-2067).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
8th Amendment AD/CVD Challenge Should Be Tossed for Lack of Jurisdiction, Proposed Intervenor Argues
The Court of International Trade should toss steel importer Rimco's challenge to the antidumping and countervailing duties it paid for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, proposed defendant-intervenor Accuride argued in a May 4 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. The case should be dismissed because CIT isn't the proper jurisdiction for the importer's challenge to the Commerce Department's decisions, the company argued (Rimco v. United States, CIT #21-00537).
Washington state did not simply remove the threat of prosecution over the possession and distribution of marijuana and marijuana "paraphernalia," and in fact legalized it, making importer Keirton USA's import of marijuana "drug paraphernalia" legal, the importer argued in a May 2 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. CBP tried to argue that the importation of such paraphernalia was illegal since Washington merely decriminalized possession of the materials rather than legalizing it. Keirton argued that this is untrue and that CBP admitted as much in a headquarters ruling (Keirton USA v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CIT #21-00452).
The International Trade Commission erred when it found that revocation of the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resin from Oman would lead to a continuation or recurrence of injury to the domestic PET resin industry within a foreseeable time, Omani exporter OCTAL argued. Filing a complaint at the Court of International Trade May 2, OCTAL argued that the ITC violated the law when it either ignored or failed to adequately address contrary evidence relating to whether the revocation of the orders would lead to injury to the U.S. industry (OCTAL Inc. v. United States, CIT #22-00135).
The Court of International Trade remanded elements of the Commerce Department's administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam. In an April 25 opinion made public May 3 submitted in two cases -- one brought by the sole mandatory respondent NTSF Seafoods Joint Stock Co. and the other by Catfish Farmers of America, et al. -- Judge M. Miller Baker sent back parts of the review that deal with Commerce's position over whether Indonesia has a comparable level of economic development to Vietnam, whether the Indian factors of production data are the best available as compared to Indonesia, Commerce's failure to engage with contradicting evidence over NTSF's ratio of whole live fish to fillets and the moisture content of NTSF's fillets.