The Commerce Department's surrogate financial ratio calculation in an antidumping duty case, while better explained, is not the most accurate calculation and thus does not comply with the law or the Court of International Trade's order, plaintiff Ancientree Cabinet Co. argued in a Nov. 12 brief at CIT. Further, the particular methodology Commerce used also doesn't jibe with the agency's past methodology and reasoning in other AD reviews, the brief said (The Ancientree Cabinet Co., Ltd. v. United States, CIT # 20-00114).
Jacob Kopnick
Jacob Kopnick, Associate Editor, is a reporter for Trade Law Daily and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and International Trade Today. He joined the Warren Communications News team in early 2021 covering a wide range of topics including trade-related court cases and export issues in Europe and Asia. Jacob's background is in trade policy, having spent time with both CSIS and USTR researching international trade and its complexities. Jacob is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Public Policy.
U.S. Steel Corporation should not be allowed to intervene in a Section 232 exclusion denial case because it has already been denied this right three other times and has no interest that can support intervention, Russian steelmaker NLMK argued in a Nov. 17 brief to the Court of International Trade. The critical flaw in U.S. Steel's intervention bid is that case is about the Commerce Department's action and not about U.S. Steel, NMLK said (NLMK Pennsylvania, LLC v. United States, CIT #21-00507).
The Court of International Trade sustained Nov. 18 the Commerce Department's remand results in a case involving a scope revision in an antidumping and countervailing duty investigation on steel trailer wheels from China. After previously sustaining the scope revision itself but remanding the retroactive imposition of the duties on subject merchandise, Judge Gary Katzmann then sustained Commerce's redetermination after it dropped the retroactive duties.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit reversed a federal district court's ruling which tossed a case seeking payment from the U.S. over damages caused from a ship delay in Delaware, holding that the district court could in fact hear the case. The appellate court, in a Nov. 16 decision, said that the court had jurisdiction since the contract between the U.S. and ship owner Nederland Shipping Corporation was a maritime contract and the law giving the U.S. cover for detaining the ship waived sovereign immunity (Nederland Shipping Corporation, et al. v. United States, 3rd Cir. #20-2269).
The European Union will request a World Trade Organization panel in its ongoing dispute settlement case against Russia's state-owned enterprise procurement practices, the European Commission announced Nov. 17. The EU is challenging Russia's favoring domestic goods and services by state-related entities "to the detriment of EU companies." The EU's panel request will be considered at the next WTO Dispute Settlement Body meeting on Nov. 29.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a notice of noncompliance Nov. 15 to counsel for the U.S. government in a case involving Section 232 duties. The notice said only one attorney may serve as principal counsel for each party. Two Department of Justice attorneys, Stephen Tosini and Kyle Beckrich, currently are listed in the docket as counsel for the U.S., with both marked to receive notice. Tosini is listed as the lead counsel and Beckrich as the counsel of record. The Federal Circuit said that "a party's failure to timely file a corrected document curing all defects identified on this notice may result in this document being stricken (PrimeSource Building Products, Inc. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. , #21-2066).
The Commerce Department has the authority to modify the scope of an antidumping duty investigation in response to evidence of evasion to ensure that the ultimate order "provides an effective remedy," the Department of Justice argued in a Nov. 12 brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. DOJ also backed the actual scope decision at issue in the case itself, asserting it was based on substantial evidence that showed Chinese companies were planning to use the original crushed glass exclusion to evade Commerce's AD/CVD orders on quartz-glass product (M S International, Inc., et al. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1679).
The Supreme Court of the U.S. may hear an appeal of the key Transpacific Steel LLC v. United States decision, seeing it as an opportunity to discuss the question of the extent to which Congress delegated tariff powers to the president, Julie Mendoza of Morris Manning, counsel to plaintiff-appellee Borusan Mannesmann, told Trade Law Daily. Having recently petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case, Mendoza said that having the case sit in front of the nation's highest court will also give her and her team a chance to argue that the most recent decision in the case runs afoul of the intelligible principle standard for delegation of powers to the president as it relates to Section 232.
The Court of International Trade again struck down the Trump administration's withdrawal of an exclusion from the Section 201 solar safeguard measures for bifacial solar panels, in its second opinion rejecting Trump administration's elimination of the exclusion as many days. Judge Gary Katzmann found that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's exclusion withdrawal was an "arbitrary and capricious agency decision" and represented a move with no statutory authority. Just a day earlier, Katzmann ruled against a presidential proclamation attempting to withdraw the bifacial panel exclusion, which came as a direct response to the CIT's preliminary injunction in the case over the USTR's move.