The Court of International Trade on Feb. 15 rejected the U.S. government's opposition to a host of lumber importers and exporters' requests to intervene in an antidumping review challenge, siding with nearly 30 years of litigation practice in which non-individually selected companies participate in judicial review of AD/CVD cases. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said that a request for review in an AD/CVD proceeding is sufficient to justify intervention "as a matter of right" at the trade court, rejecting the government's claim that a party must submit factual information or written argument before Commerce to participate at CIT.

The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 8 opinion made public Feb. 13 remanded some aspects of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on thermal paper from Germany. Judge Gary Katzmann sent back the coding of the static sensitivity product characteristic, classification of Koehler's accrued interest expenses as a cost of production and the use of the Cohen's d test to root out "masked" dumping, staying the case until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issues a decision in Stupp Corp. v. U.S. He sustained Commerce's inclusion of exporter Koehler Paper's "Blue4est" paper product within the scope of the investigation, the agency's coding of the dynamic sensitivity product characteristic and application of price adjustments for some home market rebates.

The Court of International Trade on Feb. 12 sustained the Commerce Department's decision to use a simple average of standard deviations in the denominator of Cohens d test for detecting "masked" dumping as part of the antidumping investigation of steel nails from Taiwan. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has remanded this decision twice, finding that the academic literature relies on a weighted average. On remand, Commerce said the literature uses a simple average when the sample sizes are equal and that the standard deviation of a full population is "in fact the actual standard deviation." Because the agency used the full population of data in using the Cohen's d test, using a simple average is supported, Judge Claire Kelly said.

The Court of International Trade on Feb. 12 sustained the Commerce Department's final results of the 2019-20 review of the antidumping duty order on retail bags from Malaysia. Judge Stephen Vaden upheld Commerce's use of adverse facts available to set inland freight expense data for U.S. sales the agency found to be unverifiable, as well as the decision not to correct a ministerial error on the grounds that notice of the error was untimely. The court said Commerce gave exporter Euro SME multiple chances to submit verifiable data after the agency found errors in the company's actual weight and inland freight data, making the use of AFA proper due to the resulting gaps in the record.

The Court of International Trade on Feb. 8 sustained the Commerce Department's finding that Chinese wood flooring exporter Fusong Jinlong Group was eligible for a separate rate despite its refusal due to the COVID-19 pandemic to be a mandatory respondent in a 2018-2019 AD review. However, the court allowed Commerce's application of AFA to the exporter, leaving the exporter's AD at the China-wide 85.13% while raising the review's non-individually reviewed respondents' rate from zero to 42.57%. The department made the change under protest after the court found it was treating similarly situated entities differently and hadn’t addressed Jinlong’s separate rate certification on the merits.

The Court of International Trade on Feb. 7 upheld CBP's decision to drop its finding that importer Norca Industries Co. and International Piping & Procurement Group evaded the antidumping duty order on pipe fittings from China. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said that CBP's finding, made after the Commerce Department conducted a covered merchandise referral on remand, was backed by substantial evidence. The covered merchandise referral found that the importers' carbon steel butt-weld pipe fittings were outside the order's scope.

The Court of International Trade on Jan. 31 remanded for a third time the Commerce Department's antidumping investigation on refillable stainless steel kegs from China, rejecting the agency's continued use of a Mexican data set to calculate a surrogate labor costs value for respondent Ningbo Master International Trade. Judge M. Miller Baker said Brazilian wage data already provided by petitioner American Keg was "correct as a factual matter," making Commerce's reopening of the record on remand to seek additional Mexican data unjustified.

The Court of International Trade on Jan. 30 rejected importer Spirit Aerosystems' claim that the "preceding indented text" to any 10-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading should be read as part of the article description for purposes of claiming a substituted unused merchandise drawback. Spirit's had argued its 10-digit subheading begin with the superior text "For use in civil aircraft" as opposed to "other," avoiding a prohibition on unused merchandise drawback for HTS subheadings that begin with the word "other." But Judge Claire Kelly said the "plain meaning" of the drawback statute refers to the words adjacent to the 10-digit number and not the superior indented text, and that Congress meant to exclude article descriptions with the word "other" to eliminate the need for CBP to find on a case-by-case basis whether goods are sufficiently similar to be eligible for drawback.

The Court of International Trade granted in part and denied in part the government’s motion to bar a wristwatch exporter from using certain supplemental discovery materials that were filed late -- a set of photographs and samples of crystals used in some of the watches -- in any further proceedings. The court barred Ildico from using the photographs, saying the exporter had not made a “sufficiently diligent” search for them earlier. Judge Jane Restani allowed continued use of the sample crystals for now but said she was “mystified” by the actions of both parties (Ildico Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 18-00136).

The Court of International Trade on Jan. 25 denied a U.S. motion to dismiss a customs case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, finding a protest with CBP was not needed for importer Fraserview Remanufacturing's 80 entries that were deemed liquidated despite a Commerce Department order suspending liquidation. Judge Timothy Reif said that because the statute for deemed liquidation requires the entries to not be suspended, the notices of deemed liquidation did not actually liquidate the entries. As a result, relief at the court was not available under Section 1581(a) but was available under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction.