Two companies that arrange for the shipment of goods with vessel operating carriers, Shine Shipping and Shine International (Shine), will no longer be able to import, export, transport, offer for sale, sell or assist any such activity, for any goods bearing Nike trademarks, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said. Wrapping up a trademark infringement case, the district court released the terms of the stipulated permanent injunction and final order against Shine, including orders to verify every shipment to the U.S. with either the foreign shipper, importer or foreign freight forwarder (Nike v. B&H Customs Services, S.D.N.Y. #20-01214).

The Court of International Trade sent back parts of and upheld one element of the Commerce Department's final results of the 2017-2018 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on welded line pipe from South Korea, in an April 19 opinion. Judge Claire Kelly sent back Commerce's particular market situation determination and adjustment methodology, PMS adjustment to respondent SeAH Steel Corp.'s home market sales for the sales-below-cost test, denial of a constructed export price (CEP) offset for SeAH, reallocation of respondent NEXTEEL Co.'s suspended loss and non-prime product costs, and separate rate calculation. The judge sustained, however, Commerce's decision to cap SeAH's freight revenue.

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The Commerce Department cannot use an antidumping evasion finding to reject AD review respondent Z.A. Sea Foods Private Limited's (ZASF) Vietnamese data when calculating normal value, the Court of International Trade said in an April 19 opinion. Since ZASF is not mentioned in the Enforce and Protect Act investigation cited by Commerce as the basis for rejecting the Vietnamese data, it is not clear how the agency decided that some of ZASF's Vietnamese sales ultimately wound up in the U.S., Judge Gary Katzmann said.

The Commerce Department continued to rely on adverse facts available in a countervailing duty case on remand at the Court of International Trade, holding that respondent Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi failed to act to the best of its ability when providing certain information about a Turkish government subsidiary. While it dropped AFA over Celik Halat's Section III of the initial CVD questionnaire, as instructed by the court, the agency still used AFA over Celik Halat's failure to respond to the Standard Questions Appendix of the Tax Program Appendix for the subsidy (Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi A.S. v. U.S., CIT #21-00050).

The Commerce Department and the Court of International Trade properly held that China Custom Manufacturing's solar panel mounts do not qualify for the finished goods exclusion from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, DOJ argued in an April 18 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. CCM, along with importer Greentec Engineering, ask Commerce to apply an outdated interpretation of the exclusion that doesn't consider key precedent from the Federal Circuit, the U.S. said (China Custom Manufacturing v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1345).

The Court of International Trade ordered in an April 15 opinion that exporter Oman Fasteners shall make duty deposits for potential Section 232 steel and aluminum duty liability on all entries affected by its case challenging the validity of certain Section 232 duties. Oman Fasteners requested that the court should establish and administer an escrow account throughout the stay period pending an appeal of the court's decision. A three-judge panel said that the court was not convinced that setting up an escrow account is better than depositing estimated Section 232 duties for affected entries.

The Commerce Department slashed antidumping duties for exporter BlueScope Steel from 99.20% to 4.95% after dropping its reliance on adverse facts available, on remand at the Court of International Trade in an April 14 submission. After issuing a supplemental questionnaire to BlueScope during remand proceedings and accepting the exporter's quantity and value data, Commerce said that AFA was no longer warranted (BlueScope Steel Ltd. v. United States, CIT #19-00057).

The U.S. was granted a voluntary remand in an antidumping duty and countervailing duty evasion case at the Court of International Trade. In its motion requesting the remand, CBP told the court that a remand is needed in light of arguments by the plaintiffs that the evasion finding is based on insufficient evidence. In particular, DOJ said that CBP needed to address logistical gaps in the feasibility of an alleged transshipment scheme and criticism of perceived inconsistencies in the materials submitted by the importers and the company accused of transshipping. Each of the three plaintiffs' counsel consented to the move (Global Aluminum Distributor LLC v. United States, CIT #21-00198).

Companies have the right to judicially challenge an antidumping duty investigation's final determination even if it is subject to a suspension agreement, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a series of four opinions on April 14. The court issued the opinions together as they all pertain to the same antidumping investigation on Mexican tomatoes. While the appellate court sent the cases back establishing jurisdiction for the claims against the AD investigation's final determination, the court did dismiss some claims against the termination of a prior suspension agreement and the new suspension agreement.