The Court of International Trade rejected on Feb. 18 a group of Chinese exporter's arguments that a glass input for aluminum extrusions is not countervailable since it ties in to non-subject merchandise. Since the plaintiffs' arguments are "largely conclusory statements" and not backed by evidence on the record, Judge Leo Gordon said that the Commerce Department properly found that the glass inputs were countervailable.

The Supreme Court should deny a bid to review the president's authority under the Section 232 national security tariff provision, the U.S. said in a Feb. 17 reply brief. Arguing that greater deference and flexibility are accorded the president in a national security context, the Department of Justice told the nation's highest court that the president lawfully adjusted tariff action under Section 232 beyond procedural timelines. The Supreme Court also previously ruled that Section 232 isn't an improper delegation of authority and the petitioners haven't shown this decision to be wrongly decided, the brief said (Transpacific Steel LLC, et al. v. United States, U.S. #21-721).

The U.S. Court of International Trade should deny the Department of Justice's motion to add a November 2018 investigatory “update” report from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to the administrative record in the Section 301 litigation (see 2202160033) because the government has failed to show that USTR “actually relied on or considered” the report when it was deciding to impose either the Lists 3 or List 4A tariffs on Chinese imports, Akin Gump lawyers for sample-case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products said in a partial opposition brief filed Feb. 16.

Both CBP's Trade Remedy Law Enforcement Directorate and its Office of Regulation and Rulings failed to make a factual finding when it said that importers Global Aluminum Distributor and Hialeah Aluminum Supply evaded the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, the importers and Dominican producer Kingtom Aluminio said. In two motions for judgment at the Court of International Trade, the plaintiffs and Kingtom both argued that CBP skirted the evidentiary standard, instead basing its conclusion on a vague reference to Kingtom's ties to China and discrepancies between the importers' and Kingtom's records (Global Aluminum Distributor v. United States, CIT Consol. #21-00198).

The Department of Justice wants the U.S. Court of International Trade to include two documents that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative “realized” were missing from the administrative record filed April 30 by the government in the Section 301 litigation, it said in a Feb. 15 motion to correct the record. USTR Assistant General Counsel Megan Grimball said in a declaration that the documents were “inadvertently omitted.” DOJ said USTR discovered the omissions in the two weeks since the Feb. 1 oral argument.

The Commerce Department abused its discretion by rejecting filings in antidumping duty and countervailing duty investigations that were submitted 21 and 87 minutes late, respectively, the Court of International Trade said in a pair of Feb. 15 decisions. Commerce's denials of the questionnaire responses from a Turkish exporter amounted to a "draconian penalty" on the AD/CVD respondent for an "inadvertent technical error by its counsel that had no appreciable effect" on the investigations, the court said. The result was a 53.65% dumping rate and 158.44% countervailing duty rate for the exporter.

Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

The Commerce Department reversed its decision to collapse two mandatory respondents and one of their affiliates in an antidumping duty investigation. In a bid to bring its stance in line with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Commerce said in Feb. 14 remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade that evidence to collapse all three entities was insufficient, particularly because evidence from the two mandatory respondents didn't show any common ownership. The agency also reinstated its use of adverse facts available over one of the respondents' reporting of its products' yield strength (Prosperity Tieh Enterprise Co., Ltd. v. United States, CIT #16-00138).

The Commerce Department erred when it found that Al Ghurair Iron & Steel LLC circumvented the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on corrosion-resistant steel products (CORE) from China via the United Arab Emirates, AGIS said in its Feb. 14 opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Al Ghurair Iron & Steel v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1199).

The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 14 order granted an injunction until the conclusion of litigation against the liquidation of two plaintiffs' mattress imports. The Department of Justice pushed back against that timeline. It urged an end date of April 30, the same end date as the first administrative review period of the antidumping duty order the plaintiffs are contesting. Judge Gary Katzmann said that the plaintiffs, Best Mattresses International and Rose Lion Furniture International, sufficiently showed a likelihood to succeed on the merits of the case and that they would be irreparably harmed without the indefinite injunction.