The Court of International Trade granted the Commerce Department's motion to lift a stay and voluntarily remand an antidumping duty case to give the agency a chance to consider new information showing inaccuracies in the mandatory respondent's reported sales prices, CIT said in a Sept. 20 order. The inaccuracies are based on potential fraud and Commerce has an interest in making sure the proceedings are free of fraud, the trade court said.
The Commerce Department rightly made the switch to neutral facts available from adverse facts available in an antidumping review, following a previous Court of International Trade decision that found Commerce failed to adequately give assistance to a small, first-time respondent, CIT said in a Sept. 20 decision.
The Court of International Trade rejected an importer's bid for reconsideration of its challenge of the countervailing duty rate assessed on its tire imports. The court found for the second time that the importer lacked proper jurisdiction due to an untimely filed protest of a liquidation decision. “The lesson is both clear and stark: Don’t sit on your rights,” Judge Stephen Alexander Vaden said.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade sustained the remand results in two similar antidumping duty cases after the Commerce Department dropped a particular market situation adjustment to the cost of production in the sales-below-cost test. The court issued two opinions on Sept. 17, both in cases brought by steel exporter Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Company Ltd. which challenged the 2016-17 and 2017-18 administrative reviews of the antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Thailand. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves had issued a total of three prior remands between the two cases, finding that the PMS adjustment was contrary to law, prompting Commerce to finally drop the adjustment under respectful protest.
The Department of Justice and two Alaska shipping companies squared off over a lesser-known element of the Jones Act in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska in a fight for a preliminary injunction against CBP penalties for seafood shipments. Recently granted expedited consideration by the court, both parties submitted their briefs over the PI and a temporary restraining order in a four-day span following the order. DOJ and the two companies, Kloosterboer International Forwarding and Alaska Reefer Management, also debated whether the companies' claims that CBP violated their due process rights when imposing the penalties had a likelihood of succeeding.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The International Trade Commission did not properly consider the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the domestic industry for passenger vehicle and light truck tires in a less than fair value investigation on passenger vehicle and light truck tires from South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, Sumitomo Rubber (Thailand) Co. said in a Sept. 16 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Sumitomo argued that the commission "utterly failed" to consider the entire record showing that the imports did not adversely impact the domestic PVLT tire industry.
The Commerce Department was wrong to exclude sales made by an antidumping review respondent that were further assembled in a third country before being shipped to the U.S., in an AD duty review, plaintiff JA Solar said in its Sept. 15 complaint to the Court of International Trade. Commerce had "copious" amounts of evidence showing that the respondent knew that the final destination of the goods was the U.S., meaning the agency should have included them in the review, the complaint said (JA Solar International Limited, et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00514).
Engine manufacturing giant Cummins Inc. launched a challenge to CBP's denial of its protest claiming its turbocharger housings qualify for a specific Section 301 tariff exclusion, in a Sept. 15 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The challenge seeks to prove that Cummins' imported "housings" or "covers" that are assembled into turbochargers quality for the compressor housings exclusion laid out by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (Cummins Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00517).