The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The International Trade Commission used an incorrect interpretation of the word "likely" when finding that revoking the antidumping duty order on hot-rolled steel flat products from Australia would likely lead to the recurrence of material injury to the domestic U.S. industry within a reasonably foreseeable time, Australian exporter BlueScope Steel argued. Filing a complaint at the Court of International Trade Jan. 13, BlueScope also said the ITC erred by cumulating Australian imports with other countries' imports in the injury review (BlueScope Steel v. United States, CIT # 22-00353).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit in a Jan. 9 opinion upheld a district court ruling sentencing Chinese national Shuren Qin to two years in prison for violating federal export controls. Qin was found guilty of shipping hydrophones with anti-submarine applications to a Chinese military university on the Commerce Department's Entity List (see 2109090033). Judges David Barron, Jeffrey Howard and William Kayatta ruled the search of Qin's laptop and cellphone "constituted a border search that was supported by reasonable suspicion that Qin was engaged in the ongoing violation of export laws," and the defendant was properly convicted (United States v. Shuren Qin, 1st Cir. # 21-1832).
The Commerce Department illegally found that Vandewater International's steel branch outlets are within the scope of an antidumping duty order on butt-weld pipe fittings, plaintiff-appellants Smith-Cooper International and Sigma Corp. argued in two Jan. 9 opening briefs at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Both companies said that the term "butt-weld" has an unambiguous meaning according to the scope language and that the outlets at issue clearly do not fit within that definition. Smith-Cooper went on to argue that even if ambiguity is read into this term, the (k)(1) factors do not support including the outlets under the order (Vandewater International v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1093, -1141).
The Commerce Department properly used adverse facts available for antidumping duty respondent Sino-Maple, but the agency did not properly derive the AFA rate, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Dec. 22 opinion made public Jan. 13. Judge Richard Eaton said that Commerce properly used AFA due to Sino-Maple's failure to provide constructed export price information on a per transaction basis for U.S. sales made to its U.S. affiliate by third-country manufacturers. The judge, however, sent back the AFA rate itself, finding that the agency cannot use the highest transaction-specific margin for the other respondent when setting the AFA rate. Eaton also upheld Commerce's decisions to reject separate rate applications from Scholar Home and Baishan Huafeng.
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department properly used total adverse facts available over antidumping respondent Hyundai Electric & Energy System's failure to report service-related revenue for its U.S. sales and failure of the completeness test at verification, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Jan. 11 opinion. Since the trade court previously upheld the use of AFA for each of these issues independently, Judge Mark Barnett said the court now finds substantial evidence supports the use of total AFA, as opposed to partial AFA, for both of these points.
The Commerce Department properly found that two out of three types of glass surface products made by SMA Surfaces, formerly known as Polarstone US, are included within the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on quartz surface products from China, the Court of International Trade found in a Dec. 12 opinion. However, Commerce did not support its finding that the remaining type fits under the orders, Judge Gary Katzmann ruled while remanding the case.
Judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit during Jan. 12 oral arguments expressed skepticism over claims from antidumping respondent Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export Corp. (ZMC) in its bid to rebut the presumption of government control and win a separate rate in an antidumping duty review. Judges Sharon Prost, Jimmy Reyna and Todd Hughes questioned whether ZMC's ownership structure could ever be truly free of government control, calling it "implausible." At another point in the arguments, DOJ attorney Kelly Krystyniak said that given the combination of China's corporate laws and ZMC's ownership, it may be impossible to rebut the presumption of government control and that ZMC has no inherent right to be able to rebut it (Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 21-2257).
Three cases that were suspended pending the resolution of an action over whether protests are needed to apply retroactive Section 301 exclusions continue to be stayed pending resolution of the massive Section 301 litigation, according to a Jan. 6 order from the Court of International Trade (Trebbianno v. U.S., CIT # 20-00135) (Westport v. U.S., CIT # 20-00190) (Uniflex Church Furnishings v. U.S., CIT # 20-03571).