A case brought by Canadian exporter J.D. Irving challenging the Commerce Department's antidumping duty cash deposit instructions to CBP was assigned to Judge Timothy Reif in a Jan. 5 order. The complaint contests the instruction that follows the final results of the 2019 administrative review of the AD duty order on softwood lumber products from Canada. Neither J.D. Irving nor any U.S. lumber producer requested a review of the exporter for the 2020 period of review, yet Commerce nevertheless replaced J.D. Irving's 2020 AD cash deposit rate with a dumping rate for the 2019 period, the complaint said. In doing so, the agency acted "arbitrarily and inconsistent with Congress's intent," the exporter argued. When no one requested a 2020 review, this signaled that "both sides" agreed that the cash deposit rate in effect was an accurate measure of J.D. Irving's dumping level for assessing final AD duties during 2020 and that the most recent AD cash deposit rate was the "appropriate estimated dumping margin for J.D. Irving going forward," the company said (J.D. Irving, Limited v. U.S., CIT #21-00641).
The Commerce Department should have reopened the record during its voluntary remand period to consider the question of affiliation between antidumping duty respondent OCTAL and one of its U.S. customers, OCTAL told the Court of International Trade in a Dec. 22 reply brief. Since Commerce raised the issue so late in the AD review, the record wasn't "high quality" and OCTAL didn't have a chance to properly respond to the affiliation accusations, OCTAL said (OCTAL v. U.S., CIT #20-03697).
The Department of Justice opposed logistics company Lineage Logistics Holdings' bid to appear in a case over Jones Act violations, arguing that the proposed amicus brief filing does not raise any new issues, instead giving "additional perspectives on arguments already advanced." Urging the court to deny the proposed brief entry into the case, DOJ told the court to look at other pleadings "for more detailed and thorough exploration of the issues" (Kloosterboer International Forwarding LLC, et al. v. United States, D. Alaska #3:21-00198).
The Commerce Department found in Jan. 4 remand results that dual-stenciled standard pipe and line pipe aren't to be included within the scope of the antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Thailand. Flipping its position following remand instructions from the Court of International Trade, Commerce nonetheless expressed a series of reservations over its decision to do so, dubbing the remand order "problematic."
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department erred when it weight-averaged reported raw material premium costs (DIRMATMP) for all control numbers (CONNUMs) because that distorts their costs, antidumping duty respondent Assan Aluminyum Sanayi said in a Jan. 4 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The respondent further argued against Commerce's decisions to deduct the amount of Section 232 duties paid from its U.S. price, limit Assan's full duty drawback adjustment and treat certain management fees as indirect selling expenses (Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT #21-00616).
CBP misclassified Mitsubishi Power America's supported selective catalytic reduction (SCR) catalysts, resulting in the entries wrongly being assessed Section 301 duties, the importer argued in a Jan. 4 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Instead, the supported SCR catalysts fit under a different Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading that was granted an exclusion to the Section 301 China tariffs by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the importer said (Mitsubishi Power Americas v. U.S., CIT #21-00573).
The Commerce Department properly denied antidumping duty respondent Icdas a duty drawback adjustment due to the fact that the respondent gave no evidence that its Inward Processing Certificates (i.e., requests to gain the drawback) were closed, the Department of Justice told the Court of International Trade in a Dec. 30 brief. DOJ argued that the denial doesn't cut against past practice, and even if it did, would be a reasonable position to hold (Icdas Celik Enerji Tersane ve Ulasim Sanayi v. U.S., CIT #21-00306).
Section 232 allows the president to expand tariff action beyond procedural time limits laid out in the law, as he did when he expanded the tariffs to cover steel and aluminum derivatives over a year after the tariffs were initially imposed, the Department of Justice told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in its Jan. 3 brief. Relying heavily on a recent CAFC opinion on an increase of tariffs on Turkish steel, DOJ said the president is allowed to expand Section 232 tariffs to products beyond the ones laid out in the original commerce secretary report as long as it's part of the original "plan of action" (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2066).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade: