The Court of International Trade ordered the International Trade Administration to redetermine or further explain some aspects of its 2008 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on wooden bedroom furniture from China (A-570-890), including, among other issues, the ITA’s use of zeroing (on voluntary remand), aspects of Chinese manufacturer Fairmont’s¹ partial adverse facts available (AFA) rate, some surrogate values used by the ITA to determine wages for respondents, including the use of Indian wage data, and some financial statements relied on by the ITA in its calculations.

Six people were indicted in federal court Friday for operating a smuggling ring that illegally imported cigarettes from Vietnam, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. The 18-count indictment alleges the six defendants conspired between July 2010 and May 2012 to fraudulently import, receive, possess, conceal, buy and sell contraband cigarettes from Vietnam, said ICE, and the charges carry possible maximum penalties varying from 5 to 20 years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine (per count charged), three years of supervised release, and special assessment fees.

The Court of International Trade sustained the International Trade Administration's recalculation of two Chinese companies' labor surrogate values in the final results of the ITA's 2001-02 administrative review of the antidumping order on fresh garlic from China (A-570-831). The ITA requested the voluntary remand in response to a challenge by Jinan Yipin Corporation, Ltd. and Shandong Heze International Trade and Developing Company, in light of the appeals court’s holding in Dorbest Ltd. v. U.S. that the ITA’s former regression-based calculation methodology was contrary to law. Plaintiffs agreed with the redetermined surrogate value.

The Court of International Trade granted stays in six proceedings pending resolution of the appeal in the Union Steel v. U.S. case regarding zeroing in administrative reviews. The six proceedings challenge the International Trade Administration’s use of zeroing in the 2004-05, 2005-06, and 2008-09 administrative reviews of the antidumping duty order on ball bearings and parts thereof from France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and the U.K. CIT said the AD administrative reviews concern different antidumping duty orders and administrative reviews than are involved in the Union Steel case, but both cases raise the same general issue of the permissibility under current law of the ITA’s application of the zeroing methodology in an administrative review.

The Court of International Trade remanded the final results of the 2008-09 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on polyethylene terephthalate film, sheet, and strip from China (A-570-924) for the International Trade Administration to reconsider surrogate values for certain inputs and to correct a clerical error. Specifically, CIT granted ITA’s request for a voluntary remand to address respondents Fuwei Films (Shandong) Co., Ltd. and Shaxoing Xiangyu Green Packing Co., Ltd.’s arguments regarding the surrogate value for the labor input, and also to correct a clerical error in Green’s per-unit water and electricity costs. Additionally, CIT agreed with respondents’ arguments and remanded the ITA’s use of a simple average of two HTS numbers (3907.60.20 and 3907.60.10) to obtain Indian value data for the ITA’s surrogate value for PET chips, the primary input for PET film.

The Court of International Trade dismissed Rack Room Shoes’ request for rehearing of its constitutionality challenge of certain tariff provisions of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) on the grounds that the tariffs unconstitutionally discriminate by gender and age.

The Court of International Trade remanded part of the International Trade Administration’s final results of the 2008-09 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain orange juice from Brazil (A-351-840), in order for the ITA to reconsider its decision to include currency translation when calculating Brazilian plaintiff Fischer S.A. Comercio, Industria and Agricultura’s constructed value, and to reconsider its decision to apply zeroing methodology. However, CIT rejected Fischer’s other challenges of the ITA’s constructed value corporation.

The International Trade Commission’s decision to revoke the antidumping duty order on magnesium metal from Russia was upheld by the Court of International Trade. Plaintiff US Magnesium LLC challenged the ITC’s negative injury determination in its 2010 sunset review of the AD order with respect to its decision not to conduct its injury determination based on the combined (“cumulated”) imports of magnesium from Russia and China, as well as its determination to revoke the AD order with respect to Russia. CIT said the ITC’s decision not to combine Russian and Chinese imports, as well as its decision to revoke the AD order, were both supported by substantial evidence, including, among other things, the decline of the Russian magnesium industry and the different uses for Russian and Chinese magnesium.

The Court of International Trade affirmed the International Trade Administration’s voluntary remand redetermination of the final results of the 2007-08 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen warmwater shrimp from Vietnam (A-552-802). The ITA had requested the voluntary remand to correct the methodology it used to determine the AD rate for 16 non-individually selected separate rate respondents, pursuant to earlier CIT rulings against this methodology with respect to the 2006-07 review of the same AD order.

A Singapore-based ship management company pleaded guilty and was sentenced May 30 in federal court in Mobile for deliberately falsifying records to conceal pollution discharges from the ship directly into the sea. Target Ship Management, the operator of the M/V Gaurav Prem, pleaded guilty to a violation of the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships for failing to properly maintain an oil record book as required by federal and international law, as well as making material false statements during a U.S. Coast Guard inspection of the ship at the port of Mobile in September 2011. Payongyut Vongvichinakul, the ship’s chief engineer, and Pakpoom Hanprap, the ship’s second engineer, also pleaded guilty to violations of the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, and are scheduled to be sentenced on July 19, 2012. The company is to pay a $1 million criminal fine along with a $200,000 community service payment to the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation. Target was also sentenced to three years probation. As a condition of the probation, ships operated or managed by Target that will or may call on the United States, must be subject to an environmental compliance plan supervised by outside auditors and the court. According to court filings, Target employees discharged oily bilge waste from the M/VGaurav Prem on multiple occasions as the vessel sailed from South Korea to Mobile. The discharges intentionally bypassed required pollution prevention equipment, they said. The ship’s captain, Prastana Taohim, was convicted at a jury trial May 17, 2012 (See ITT's Online Archives 12052126).