The Commerce Department erred when it treated Section 232 steel and aluminum duties as ordinary customs duties and deducted them from antidumping duty respondent Borusan's export price and constructed export price, the respondent argued in a Jan. 17 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT #23-00005).
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 13 order granted the Commerce Department's voluntary remand request in an antidumping duty case. Commerce wanted the remand period to review the non-selected respondents' rate in an AD review since the rate was based on the prior administrative review's rate, which was changed after separate litigation at the trade court (Danyang Weiwang Tools Manufacturing Co. v. U.S., CIT # 19-00006).
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 16 paperless order denied a U.S. motion to exclude live testimony from plaintiff Oman Fasteners' CEO, Seve Karaga, in an antidumping duty case. The court said that Oman Fasteners can call Karaga to testify at the Jan. 23 hearing over the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction, though the testimony "shall be confined to the facts set forth in his declaration attached to Plaintiffs motion" (Oman Fasteners v. United States, CIT # 22-00348).
The Court of International Trade should have allowed a company that filed an attorney conflict-of-interest suit involving an International Trade Commission AD/CVD injury proceeding to amend its allegations to comply with the court's opinion, rather than dismissing the case outright with leave to file under a different jurisdictional provision, said the company, Amstead Rail Co., in an opening brief filed Jan. 13 at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Amsted Rail Company v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1355).
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: