US Seeks Dismissal of Case Seeking Changed Circumstances Review for Chinese-Origin Wood Shutter Parts
The U.S. filed Jan. 21 to dismiss a 2024 case brought by importer Houston Shutters under 28 U.S.C. 1581(i) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, saying the true nature of the action is a challenge to a scope determination and that the action should have been brought under Section 1581(c) instead (Houston Shutters v. U.S., CIT # 24-00193).
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Houston Shutters filed its case to the trade court in October alleging that the Commerce Department should have opened a changed circumstances review during antidumping and countervailing duty determinations on wood mouldings and millwork products from China (see 2410170017). During the investigations, exporter Lanzhou Xinyoulian Industrial Co. asked the department to exclude wood shutter components from the scope of the AD/CVD orders, but failed to follow up and provide the department the information requested of it. Following the investigations, Houston Shutters sought the changed circumstances review for the same reasons, this time offering the information Commerce had asked for. The department denied the request.
The government, in its Jan. 21 brief, called Houston Shutters’ complaint “creative pleading” intended to disguise the fact the importer was actually challenging the scope determination it reached in the investigations, not Commerce’s denial of the changed circumstances review request.
“[T]he Federal Circuit has held multiple times that ‘recasting a scope dispute’ as another type of challenge when the true nature of the action is a ‘scope dispute’ does not create § 1581(i) jurisdiction,” it said.
It said that “nearly all” of the importer’s “42-page request” for a changed circumstances review was spent “attempting to distinguish wood shutter components from wood millwork products,” even though that information should have been provided during the investigations.
Houston Shutters hadn’t been a party in the original investigations, but it could have participated considering it was now asserting standing before the Court of International Trade as an interested party, the U.S. said.
It also noted that the importer “did not truly identify any ‘changed circumstances’ in its request for a CCR, nor does it truly identify any changed circumstances in its complaint before this Court.” Rather, Houston Shutters was just improperly calling the provision of information Commerce had initially asked for during the investigations “changed circumstances.”