A Turkish rebar exporter and the government held oral arguments last week over the countervailability of a Turkish subsidy that Court of International Trade Judge Gary Katzmann implied could be considered de jure, but not de facto, specific. They also debated the reliability of a report on land benchmark prices that was prepared specifically for litigation and that included government rates (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT #23-00131).

The Court of International Trade dismissed importer Greentech Energy Solutions' challenge to antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese solar cells to its Vietnamese solar cell entries for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction.

The Commerce Department reconsidered on remand its model match hierarchy in the antidumping duty investigation on superabsorbent polymers (SAP) from South Korea, opting to go with the hierarchy made of centrifugal retention capacity "in 6 g/g increments" it used in the investigation's preliminary determination but not in the final decision (The Ad Hoc Coalition of American SAP Producers v. United States, CIT # 23-00010).

An exporter of vehicle side bars said the U.S. is wrongly relying on a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit patent case to convince the trade court to rule against that exporter (Keystone Automotive Operations v. U.S., CIT # 21-00215).

Importer Marcatus QED filed a complaint on June 13 at the Court of International Trade, claiming that the Commerce Department erred in finding that the company's shipments of preserved garlic in brine fell within the scope of the antidumping duty order on fresh garlic from China (Marcatus QED v. United States, CIT # 24-00091).

Exporter Hyundai Steel continued to challenge the Commerce Department's finding that the South Korean government's cap-and-trade carbon emissions program was de jure specific, in comments on the agency's remand results filed at the Court of International Trade on June 13 (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00029).

The Court of International Trade in a text-only June 12 order sent a customs case on importer Cozy Comfort's wearable blanket, the "Comfy," to trial after the company claimed that there was a genuine factual dispute at issue in the case. Judge Stephen Vaden ordered a bench trial for the case to be held Oct. 21 following oral argument on June 12 (Cozy Comfort Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00173).

The U.S. asked the Court of International Trade on June 12 to order importer Rayson Global and its owner Doris Cheng to pay over $5.8 million for skirting antidumping and Section 301 duties on uncovered mattress innersprings from China as part of a default judgment against the two defendants (United States v. Rayson Global, CIT # 23-00201).

The Court of International Trade on June 12 rejected customs broker Seko Customs Brokerage's motion for an expedited briefing schedule on its motion for an injunction in its suit against CBP's suspension of the company from participation in the Entry Type 86 and Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism programs (Seko Customs Brokerage v. U.S., CIT # 24-00097).

The U.S. told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on June 10 that the Court of International Trade correctly found that sales between Canada-based Midwest-CBK and its U.S. customers met the requirement of being sold "for exportation into the United States" and thus were properly liquidated using transaction value with a 75.75% "uplift" to the goods' valuation. Goods are meant for export to the U.S. when they are "clearly destined for the United States at the time of the sale," which the goods at issue were, the government said (Midwest-CBK v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1142).