The Commerce Department wrongly said there was ambiguity in the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood from China, the Court of International Trade ruled. Judge Mark Barnett, remanding Commerce's scope ruling, said the scope language and the (k)(1) sources confirm the "unambiguous" meaning of the orders' scope, which excludes two-ply panels imported from China to Vietnam.

The Commerce Department properly found that a particular market situation did not exist in South Korea affecting inputs for oil country tubular goods from South Korea, the Court of International Trade ruled in a case on an antidumping review on Korean OCTG. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said the agency legally found that hot-rolled coil imports from China and South Korea's electricity market did not constitute a PMS.

The Commerce Department must reconsider its explanation that all costs stemming from a merger are for expanding normal business operations and thus not extraordinary, the Court of International Trade ruled April 20. Judge Gary Katzmann said Commerce laid out this explanation "without citing to agency practice or court precedent, or any accounting principles supporting its position."

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act does not apply to criminal cases, the Supreme Court of the U.S. held in an April 17 opinion, opening Turkish state-owned Halkbank up to criminal prosecution for conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the author of the opinion, said the text of the FSIA, which the bank claimed protected it from prosecution, clearly shows it only addresses civil suits. Six of the court's justices sided with Kavanaugh, with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissenting (Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. U.S., Sup. Ct. # 21-1450).

Importer SXP Schulz Xtruded Products needed a protest to properly challenge CBP's failure to apply a Section 232 duty exclusion on four entries of its steel forged and turned bars, the Court of International Trade ruled. Dismissing the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves held that SXP could have filed for an extension of liquidation while it was waiting for the Commerce Department to correct the erroneous exclusion it issued or simply have filed a protest, which would have queued up jurisdiction under Section 1581(a).

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A CBP remand determination that importer Diamond Tools Technology didn't evade antidumping and countervailing duty orders on diamond sawblades from China is correct, although the agency continues to err in its underlying explanations, the company said in its April 17 remand comments at the Court of International Trade. CBP admitted under protest that Diamond Tools didn't make a "material and false statement" in its March remand results (see 2303200072) but the importer argued that CBP still misinterprets the Enforce and Protect Act statute and misunderstands its authority (Diamond Tools Technology v. United States, CIT # 20-00060).

The Coalition of Freight Coupler Producers refiled a motion to waive the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's redaction limits in a conflict-of-interest proceeding after the court rejected an initial bid to waive the requirements. The coalition asked the court for permission to redact 180 unique words, given that the reasons for redaction are rooted in existing judicial orders and the law, "are narrowly tailored toward" three groups of information grounded in the law and the redaction would not "frustrate the public policy regarding confidentiality in proceedings" at the Federal Circuit (Amsted Rail Company v. ITC, Fed. Cir. # 23-1355).

The Commerce Department illegally deducted Section 301 China tariff duties from exporter Neimenggu Fufeng Biotechnologies Co.'s U.S. price in the 2020-21 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on xanthan gum from China, Fufeng argued in a complaint at the Court of International Trade. Fufeng added in its seven-count complaint that Commerce improperly decided to directly value energy factors of production in its normal value calculation based on a revision of Ajinomoto (Malaysia) Berhad's preliminary financial ratio calculations (Neimenggu Fufeng Biotechnologies Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00068).

The Commerce Department should have considered alternatives to account for an antidumping duty respondent's distorted costs even when faced with U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit precedent barring particular market situation adjustments to the sales-below-cost test, Ellwood City Forge argued in comments at the Court of International Trade. One alternative would have been for Commerce to adjust for the PMS under the sales-below-cost test because the relevant exporter's records don't accurately reflect the exporter's costs, the brief said (Ellwood City Forge Co. v. United States, CIT # 21-00077).