The Court of International Trade granted the Justice Department's motion to stay a case challenging the expansion of Section 232 duties on steel and aluminum "derivatives," in an Oct. 14 order, due in part, to the defendant's likelihood of succeeding on appeal. A majority panel at CIT found in the case that President Donald Trump's 2018 decision to expand the Section 232 duties onto the derivative products was made beyond the 105-day deadline laid out in the Section 232 statute. The court now recognizes that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's decision in Transpacific Steel LLC, et al. v. U.S., permitting the president to take Section 232 tariff actions beyond procedural deadlines, indicates the DOJ's likelihood of succeeding in its appeal.

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 12 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in the 14th administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain frozen fish fillets from Vietnam. After previously remanding Commerce's application of adverse facts available for lack of substantial evidence, Judge Miller Baker sustained the AFA application after Commerce switched out the grounds on which it based its AFA finding. Initially, Commerce applied AFA based on the respondent's reporting failures related to customer relationships and factors of production reporting issues, but now bases the finding to the respondent's failure to maintain source documents and control number reporting issues.

The Court of International Trade remanded the Commerce Department's final results in the administrative review of the countervailing duty order on certain passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China covering entries from 2017, in an Oct. 12 order. Commerce, as it has done many times before, applied adverse facts available relating to its inability to verify non-use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program by the two mandatory respondents' U.S. customers. Judge Timothy Reif issued lengthy remand orders to Commerce, instructing the agency, for instance, to explain how one of the respondent's questionnaire statements showing its non-use of the program are unverifiable by describing Commerce's step-by-step methodology for verifying non-use.

Only district courts, not the Court of International Trade, have the jurisdiction to hear cases over property seized by CBP, CIT said in an Oct. 7 order. Dismissing a case brought by Root Sciences over its seized "drug paraphernalia," Judge Gary Katzmann said that since the seized goods were never deemed excluded, there was no protestable action by CBP, precluding jurisdiction at CIT. Katzmann also held that questions about CBP's lack of notice to Root about the seizure should be decided by district courts and not CIT.

The Court of International Trade allowed a company accused of transshipping aluminum extrusions from China in an Enforce and Protect Act investigation to participate in a case over the evasion finding, in an Oct. 7 order. Having previously ruled that the alleged transshipper, Kingtom Aluminio, could not intervene in the case for lack of a legally protectable interest in the case, Judge Richard Eaton ruled that Kingtom's contractual arrangements provide an interest in the transaction at issue that has a direct relationship to the litigation and the existing parties don't adequately represent Kingtom's interests.

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 6 stuck down a Commerce Department scope ruling that found dual-stenciled pipe is covered by the antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Thailand, remanding the ruling back to Commerce for further consideration. The plaintiff, Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Company, argued that Commerce ignored overwhelming evidence that dual-stenciled line pipe was intentionally excluded from the ITC's injury determination underlying the AD order. Judge Stephen Vaden found that no Thai manufacturer made dual-stenciled pipe imported as line pipe at the time of the AD order, so it couldn't have been included in the scope of the order.

The Court of International Trade granted an indefinite injunction against the liquidation of Moroccan exporter OCP S.A.'s phosphate fertilizers in an Oct. 4 order. The key issue before the court over the injunction was its length. The U.S., while agreeing to the injunction in principle, thought the injunction should only run to the end of the first administrative review of the countervailing duty order on the fertilizers -- a review that had yet to commence. OCP pushed for an indefinite injunction against liquidation. The court sided with OCP, finding that the exporter has sufficiently showed that it will suffer irreparable harm if the court enters an injunction that doesn't extend to entries affected by this litigation and occurring after the end of the 2021 calendar year -- the date at which automatic liquidation would begin.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held in an Oct. 4 opinion that the Commerce Department properly applied adverse facts available to Hyundai Electric & Energy Systems in an antidumping review on large power transformers from South Korea. In the review, Hyundai said it shifted costs among LPT projects in the ordinary course of business to show that each project was profitable. Commerce requested information on this cost shifting from Hyundai, who broke down the cost differences by LPT project for reconciliation into six categories. Commerce deemed that Hyundai only gave sufficient information on one of these categories. The Court of International Trade had also found Commerce's resulting application of AFA to be appropriate.

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in the 13th administrative review of the antidumping duty order on fish fillets from Vietnam in a Sept. 27 order. In the review, Commerce applied total adverse facts available to the mandatory respondents, leading to a $3.87/kg dumping margin which the court upheld in a previous decision. Commerce also extended this rate to the non-individually reviewed "separate rate" respondents, which the court remanded. Under protest, Commerce set the separate rate by averaging the separate rates from the previous four administrative reviews, which the court ultimately sustained.

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's final results in the antidumping duty investigation of certain quartz surface products from China, in Sept. 24 opinion. Judge Leo Gordon upheld Commerce's selection of Mexico as the primary surrogate country over Malaysia for the purposes of calculating normal value. Seeing as the plaintiffs needed to prove that Malaysia was the "one and only reasonable surrogate country selection" in order for the court to justify the switch, Gordon ruled in favor of Commerce since the plaintiffs failed to make this demonstration, the opinion said.