The Court of International Trade in an Aug. 29 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's decision to reverse its finding that a particular market situation existed for an input of oil country tubular goods in South Korea. The court previously remanded the PMS determination in the 2017-18 administrative review of the AD order on OCTG as being unsupported by substantial evidence. The agency then flipped its finding, prompting Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves to sustain the remand results. Previously, the judge also sent back Commerce's use of the Cohen's d test to root out masked dumping, but since respondent SeAH Steel Corp. was given a de minimis dumping margin, the issue was moot.

The Court of International Trade in an Aug. 26 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in the 2016-17 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on oil country tubular goods from South Korea. Previously, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves remanded Commerce's particular market situation finding, reallocation of respondent NEXTEEL's reported costs for non-prime products for an allocation based on actual costs, adjustment to NEXTEEL' production line suspension costs, calculation of respondent SeAH Steel Co.'s affiliated seller's further manufacturing cost and inclusion of SeAH's inventory valuation losses in its general and administrative expense ratio.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in an Aug. 26 opinion rejected another group of appellants' appeal seeking to establish that the Commerce Department can make a particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test when finding normal value. The appellate court previously rejected this claim in Hyundai Steel v. U.S. The appellants, led by American Cast Iron Pipe Co., sought to differentiate its case from Hyundai Steel by arguing that its case appeals an original investigation while the Hyundai Steel matter challenged an administrative review.

The Commerce Department was right to exclude dual-stenciled standard pipe and line pipe from the antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Thailand, the Court of International Trade said in an Aug. 25 opinion. Upholding Commerce's remand results in a scope challenge, Judge Stephen Vaden ruled that no line pipe was made in Thailand when the initial AD investigation was commenced over 40 years ago and no injury finding was made for line or dual-stenciled pipe from Thailand.

The Court of International Trade in an Aug. 24 opinion sustained the Commerce Department's fourth remand results in a case on the 2015-16 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea. In the remand results, Commerce dropped its finding that a particular market situation distorted the price of a key input of the steel pipe. Previously in the case, the agency dropped the PMS adjustment to one of the AD review respondents but not the other. The elimination of the adjustment for the other in the fourth remand results resulted in a decrease in non-selected respondent SeAH Steel Corp.'s dumping rate from 19.28% to 9.77%.

The Court of International Trade on Aug. 18 upheld the Commerce Department’s decision to apply facts available to production costs for a French steel plate exporter unable to distinguish between costs for its prime and non-prime merchandise, but again remanded the agency’s determination to use sales prices as a stand-in. Ruling on remand results filed by Commerce in response a Federal Circuit decision on its AD duty investigation on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from France, the trade court found Commerce did not adequately explain its continued reliance on sales data for the non-prime plate, which are rejects from the production process that aren’t up to standard. CIT did agree with Commerce that the agency may rely on facts available because Dillinger’s lack of data on production costs for producing the non-prime plate affects how costs are allocated for all of the exporter’s merchandise.

The Court of International Trade on Aug. 18 dismissed a lawsuit filed by the maker of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps and other importers to challenge an Enforce and Protect Act determination that they evaded antidumping duties on xanthan gum from China. The trade court found the soapmaker, All One God Faith, as well as another importer did not file suit under jurisdiction provisions for denied protests, and so could not overcome the erroneous liquidation of their entries by CBP.

The Court of International Trade on Aug. 16 remanded the Commerce Department's cost calculations for a Brazilian paper manufacturer in the third administrative review of the antidumping duty order on uncoated paper from Brazil. Judge Gary Katzmann remanded back to Commerce the issue of its inclusion of Suzano’s derivative expenses in its cost of production. The judge ordered Commerce to provide the court with its remand results within 90 days.

The Court of International Trade ruled that a nitrogen oxide sensor probe for diesel engines should be classified as an instrument of chemical analysis under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 9027, rather than an instrument of measurement under heading 9026. Continental Automotive Systems sued CBP over the classification and Judge Jane Restani ruled in favor of the government in the Aug. 12 decision.

Minor issues in reporting home market sales in an antidumping duty administrative review don’t rise to the level that would justify an adverse facts available margin for an exporter’s large power transformers from South Korea, and the exporter’s purported lack of cooperation in a previous year’s administrative review does not give Commerce leeway to apply AFA anyway, said the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in an Aug. 11 decision. Affirming a decision of the Court of International Trade, the Federal Circuit upheld the lower court’s finding that the errors in a small subset of Hyundai Electric & Energy Systems’s reported home market sales “were inadvertent and were corrected without undue difficulty,” and should not have served as the basis for the 60.81% AFA rate originally assigned by Commerce. On remand, Commerce had dropped its reliance on AFA and calculated a zero percent AD duty rate. Hitachi, petitioner in the case, had appealed.