CIT Says CAFC Ruling Controls on Scope Ruling of Magnesia Carbon Bricks
The Commerce Department properly excluded seven types of bricks imported by Fedmet Resources Corp. from the scope of the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on magnesia carbon bricks from China on remand, the Court of International Trade held on Oct. 9. Judge M. Miller Baker said the conclusion comports with a 2014 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision, which led to the standard that the addition of any amount of alumina to a magnesia carbon brick excludes it from the orders.
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Baker's ruling was made in a case on a merchandise scope referral in an AD/CVD evasion case on 11 of Fedmet's brick types. In previously remanding the scope ruling, the court said Commerce ignored the CAFC ruling and relied on its own 2015 scope ruling, which said magnesia carbon bricks with an alumina content above 5% are magnesia alumina carbon bricks and thus excluded from the AD/CVD orders (see 2412130061). Baker said the Federal Circuit "rejected any such demarcation."
On remand, the agency said that since seven of Fedmet's bricks are certified to have a non-zero alumina content, they aren't subject to the orders (see 2503130022). The Magnesia Carbon Bricks Fair Trade Committee, a group of domestic producers that includes Resco Products, the petitioner in the underlying AD/CVD investigations, argued that Baker previously misinterpreted the CAFC's ruling.
Baker said he's "unpersuaded." Commerce said alumina "is the defining component" of magnesia alumina carbon bricks, and the Federal Circuit said that in the underlying AD/CVD investigations, Resco "disclaimed" including these bricks in the orders. Thus, Resco's failure to identify a "cut-off point" at which the addition of alumina to a magnesia carbon brick "transforms it into a" magnesia alumina carbon brick didn't "result in ambiguity," the court said.
The public was entitled to rely on Resco's "disclaimers of coverage" of magnesia alumina carbon bricks. To any extent magnesia carbon bricks and magnesia alumina carbon bricks overlap, "the overlap was surrendered by Resco’s failure to provide a technical definition or ‘cut[-]off point’ when asked to be more specific," Baker said.
The court held that the Federal Circuit's reasoning, in which it noted that Commerce and the International Trade Commission opted "not to provide any chemical composition of technical specifications" for subject goods and just rely on their name, "applies with equal force here." The agency can't now go beyond the "name" of magnesia alumina carbon bricks and supply the "chemical composition" or "technical specification" requirements Resco failed to provide in the investigations, the court said.
While CAFC Judge Evan Wallach identified a potential consequence of this ruling in his dissent, which is that importers can just add small amounts of alumina to create non-subject bricks, Baker said the U.S. industry could use anti-circumvention proceedings to address such action.
(Fedmet Resources v. United States, Slip Op. 25-136, CIT # 23-00117, dated 10/09/25' Judge: M. Miller Baker; Attorneys: J. Michael Taylor of King & Spalding for defendant-intervenor Magnesia Carbon Bricks Fair Trade Committee; Antonia Soares for defendant U.S. government; R. Will Planert of Morris Manning for plaintiff Fedmet Resources Corp.)