The Commerce Department's "practice" cited by an antidumping duty respondent that says that Commerce will not consider new issues after an undefined point in a proceeding "does not actually exist," AD petitioner Wheatland Tube Co. argued in a July 29 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Wheatland said that Commerce properly used adverse facts available in the contested antidumping duty review to find that respondent Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Co. was affiliated with various home market customers and that there is no merit to Saha Thai's claims that information submitted by Wheatland to clarify this affiliation information did not comply with Commerce's regulations (Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Co. Ltd. v. United States, CIT #21-00627).
The U.S., in a July 28 brief at the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, argued oral argument is needed in a case over alleged Jones Act penalties committed by shipping companies Kloosterboer International Forwarding and Alaska Reefer Management. The U.S. pushed back against KIF and ARM's opposition to oral argument, arguing that the meeting is needed to "fully vet the complex issues in this case" and fully inform the court about the record (Kloosterboer International Forwarding v. United States, D. Alaska #3:21-00198).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade in an Aug. 1 order granted the U.S.'s motion to stay a consolidated case contesting an antidumping and countervailing duty evasion case after the plaintiffs, led by Dominican manufacturer Kingtom Aluminio, backed off their opposition to the stay. The plaintiffs did so after CBP flipped its evasion finding on importers Global Aluminum Distributor and Hialeah Aluminum Supply. In the Global Aluminum Distributor case, CBP said it no longer believes the importers evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China by transshipping them through Kingtom in the Dominican Republic (see 2206150047). In Kingtom's two cases, the U.S. requested a stay until the court sorts out the Global Aluminum case. The stay was granted with Judge Richard Easton ordering the parties to confer and jointly submit a status report and a proposed briefing schedule 14 days from the date judgment is entered in the Global Aluminum Distributor case (Kingtom Aluminio v. United States, CIT Consol. #22-00072).
The Commerce Department dropped its finding that a particular market situation distorted the price of a key input of circular welded non-alloy steel pipe, in Aug. 2 remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade in an antidumping duty case. Prior to this remand, Commerce had already dropped the PMS adjustment to one of the antidumping duty review's mandatory respondents but not the other. On remand for the fourth time in the action, the agency dropped the PMS adjustment for the remaining respondent, dropping non-selected respondent SeAH Steel Corp.'s dumping rate from 19.28% to 9.77% (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. #18-00154).
The Commerce Department added certain service-related revenues in antidumping duty respondent Nippon Steel's U.S. price in voluntarily requested remand results, dropping the exporter's dumping margin from 11.70% to 10.12%. Agreeing it "inadvertently" left three service-related expenses out of its calculations of Nippon Steel's U.S. price, Commerce requested the voluntary remand, including them in the price calculations. Nippon Steel still took issue with Commerce's draft revision, prompting the agency to make further revisions to the calculation of the net price used in the differential pricing test and the revenue for the constructed export price (CEP) profit rate (Nippon Steel v. U.S., CIT #21-00533).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in an Aug. 8 opinion held that tradeable tax credits fall within the regulatory definition of a "price adjustment," meaning the Commerce Department properly deducted the credits from respondent LDC Argentina's export price. Judges Kimberly Moore, Richard Taranto and Todd Hughes also ruled that Commerce's use of an international market price for soybeans in its constructed value calculation for biodiesel does not count as a double remedy, even though the U.S. imposed countervailing duties on Argentine soybeans.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Government of Ontario won't participate in an appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over the countervailing duty investigation on wind towers from Canada. Ontario gave notice of its non-participation on July 27 in the case. In March, the Court of International Trade sustained all five of the Commerce Departments positions under contention in the investigation. The consolidated case includes challenges to the investigation from Marmen Energie, which was the mandatory respondent; the governments of Canada, Quebec and Ontario; and the Wind Tower Trade Coalition, though now the Government of Ontario has dropped out of the appeal. Though it is out of the appeal, the court refused to drop the government from the case's official caption (The Government of Quebec, et al. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1807).
The U.S. identified an incorrect standard for intervention in opposing exporter SeAH Steel Corp.'s motion to intervene in an antidumping proceeding at the Court of International Trade, SeAH argued in a July 29 brief. The exporter argued that it clearly has a right to intervene in the action since a CIT rule says that a party can intervene if it is given an unconditional right to intervene by a federal statute. Given that a federal statute does just that since SeAH was a party to the underlying review in question, SeAH said it can intervene in the case (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00138).