Jacob Kopnick

Despite the Department of Justice's agreement to a limited injunction against liquidation through the end of the first administrative review of the relevant antidumping duty order, Ashley Furniture still seeks an open-ended injunction is needed to avoid irreparable harm due to a potentially years-long litigation that could run beyond the end of the first review, Ashley said in a Sept. 17 reply brief at the Court of International Trade.

The Commerce Department's mandatory respondent selection process in a countervailing duty case on wood flooring resembled "Russian roulette" due to fundamental errors in the CBP data used to make the respondent picks, plaintiffs in a case at the Court of International Trade said in four briefs (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co., Ltd., et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #20-03885).

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The Commerce Department violated the law when it found that antidumping duty review respondent BlueScope Steel Pty did not reimburse its U.S. affiliate, BlueScope Steel Americas (BSA), for antidumping duties, U.S. Steel Corp. said in a Sept. 20 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The agency failed to consider evidence provided by U.S. Steel that detracts from the agency's conclusion and failed to provide a reasoned explanation that reimbursement was not occurring, the steel giant said (United States Steel Corporation v. United States, CIT #21-00528).

The Commerce Department violated the law when it decided not to undertake a scope inquiry upon the request of Zhejiang Yuhua Timber Co., A-Timber Flooring Company Limited and Mullican Flooring Co., the three companies said in a Sept. 17 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Zhejiang Yuhua Timber Co. Ltd., et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00502).

LG Electronics, and its U.S. affiliate, launched a case at the Court of International Trade against the International Trade Commission for freezing out certain members of its counsel from a safeguard extension proceeding on solar panels, in a Sept. 16 complaint. The ITC did not grant full access to proprietary information for all of LGE's legal team, from the firm Curtis Mallet-Prevost, due to the lawyers' roles in representing China in a dispute settlement case at the World Trade Organization (LG Electronics USA, Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT 21-00520).

The Court of International Trade said the Commerce Department had sufficient evidence in its changed circumstances review that found that the situation had not changed regarding countervailable subsidies for Argentina's biodiesel industry. Judge Gary Katzmann, in a Sept. 21 opinion, also held that Commerce, which originally found changed circumstances but later switched back to a finding of no changed circumstances, acted in accordance with the law.

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The Commerce Department's decision to grant byproduct offsets for an antidumping review respondent's fish oil and fish meal exports was backed by sufficient evidence, the Court of International Trade said in a Sept. 20 order. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves also ruled that Commerce's determination that the Global Trade Atlas' (GTA) data was the best available to calculate a surrogate value for the two byproducts was properly supported.

The Court of International Trade granted the Commerce Department's motion to lift a stay and voluntarily remand an antidumping duty case to give the agency a chance to consider new information showing inaccuracies in the mandatory respondent's reported sales prices, CIT said in a Sept. 20 order. The inaccuracies are based on potential fraud and Commerce has an interest in making sure the proceedings are free of fraud, the trade court said.