The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The Commerce Department will move the date of imposition of antidumping and countervailing duties on a subset of steel trailer wheels from China to the date of publication of the final determination in the investigation, rather than the date of the preliminary determination, it said a pair of remand results filed June 14. The Court of International Trade told Commerce May 18 to make the switch, finding that the agency did not provide proper notice of a scope change during the proceeding (see 2105180062). In two filings, one for the antidumping case and one for the countervailing duty case, Commerce said that it intends to issue instructions to CBP to exclude plaintiffs Trans Texas Tire and Zhejiang Jingu Co.'s entries of physical vapor deposition (PVD) chrome wheels entered between Feb. 25, 2019, and June 24, 2019, from the scope of the investigation (Trans Texas Tire, LLC v. United States, CIT #19-00188-00189).

Oral argument is scheduled for 10 a.m. on June 17 on a motion for a preliminary injunction to freeze liquidation of unliquidated entries from China with lists 3 or 4A tariff exposure in the ongoing litigation over the tariffs led by HMTX and Jasco at the Court of International Trade (see 2106140056). The public can listen through a dial-in audio feed by calling 1-855-244-8681, access code 172 077 0162. There is no need to register to listen to the proceeding, CIT said on its website.

The Court of International Trade sustained the final results of the second administrative review of the antidumping duty order on steel nails from Oman, in a June 14 decision. Judge Richard Eaton held that there was substantial evidence to back the Commerce Department's decision to use a Japanese company's financial statement to determine constructed value profit and indirect selling expenses for mandatory respondent Oman Fasteners, as opposed to an Indian company's financial statement as favored by petitioner and plaintiff in the case, Mid Continent Steel & Wire.

President Donald Trump properly eliminated a tariff exemption for bifacial solar panels since a majority of the representatives of the domestic industry, by volume, filed a petition to remove the exemption, the Department of Justice said in a June 11 brief in the Court of International Trade. Responding to arguments from the Solar Energy Industries Association, the Justice Department contested the trade group's assertion that the withdrawal of the exemption was merely based on a "head count" (Solar Energy Industries Association et al. v. United States, CIT #20-03941).

The Commerce Department will reconsider its decision to reallocate the cost of production for antidumping administrative review respondent Nexteel Co.'s non-prime products to account for their losses when calculating constructed value, the Court of International Trade said in a June 7 ruling made public on June 15. Issuing her second remand in the case brought from steel producers Husteel Co. and Nexteel over the 2016-17 AD administrative review of welded line pipe from Korea, Judge Claire Kelly sustained all other determinations made by Commerce.

A challenge to Section 232 tariffs on steel “derivatives” brought by Tempo Global Resources will have to wait until after a key appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the Court of International Trade said in a June 14 stay order. In a related case, PrimeSource Building Products Inc. v. United States, CIT found the tariff expansion onto steel and aluminum derivatives to be in violation of congressionally mandated time limits. On June 4, the Justice Department alerted the court of its intention to appeal to the Federal Circuit (see 2106110040) (Tempo Global Resources LLC v. United States, CIT #20-00066).

The Court of International Trade is set to hold oral arguments over a key relief question in the massive Section 301 litigation on June 17. Chief Judge Mark Barnett sent out four questions to the parties in a June 14 letter concerning the following: (1) how uncertainty over the court's authority to provide relief establishes that the plaintiffs are likely to suffer irreparable harm without this relief, (2) cases in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that CIT did not determine appropriate relief, (3) how the first question is articulated by the Supreme Court decision Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council and (4) the court's authority to enter a money judgment instead of reliquidation in the event the plaintiff's preliminary injunction prevails. The oral arguments will be held over the motion for a preliminary injunction filed by the plaintiffs to freeze the liquidation of unliquidated entries from China with lists 3 and 4A tariff exposure (see 2106070017).

A far-reaching legal challenge to Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs brought by ME Global was stayed by the Court of International Trade pending an appeal of a related case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, according to a June 14 stay order (ME Global, Inc. v. United States, CIT #20-00130) The Federal Circuit case, Universal Steel Products, Inc. v. United States, carries arguments similar to those in ME Global's case in that both claim that procedural requirements were ignored in President Donald Trump's expansion of the tariffs (see 2105250077).

The Court of International Trade should stay liquidation of PrimeSource Building Products' imports of steel "derivatives" and reinstate the requirement of PrimeSource to monitor future derivative imports and maintain a sufficient continuous bond, pending an appeal of the steel derivative decision, the Department of Justice said in a June 9 filing.