The Commerce Department failed to justify its de facto specificity finding regarding the South Korean government's provision of electricity below cost in the 2021 review of the countervailing duty order on cut-to-length carbon-quality steel plate from South Korea, the Court of International Trade held in a decision made public Dec. 17. Judge Claire Kelly said Commerce didn't lay out a "rational basis" for grouping certain industries together and declaring that the selected industries received a disproportionate benefit from the program.

The Commerce Department failed to consider whether importer Hardware Resources' edge-glued wood boards were wood mouldings and millwork products when it included the goods in the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on wood mouldings and millwork products from China, the Court of International Trade held on Dec. 16. In his first decision since joining the court, Judge Joseph Laroski said Commerce "ignored the threshold question of whether the product at issue is a wood moulding or millwork product."

The Court of International Trade upheld Dec. 17 the Commerce Department’s decision to swap back to the model match methodology it had used earlier in a review of antidumping duty orders on superabsorbent polymers from South Korea. The change meant administrative review mandatory respondent LG Chem’s AD rate jumped back up, from 17.64% to 26.05%.

The Court of International Trade rejected U.S. Steel Corp.'s bid to redact portions of the court's recent decision remanding 31 Section 232 exclusion requests. Judge M. Miller Baker said a showing of good cause alone isn't enough to shield discovery materials after they have been introduced at trial or submitted "in connection with dispositive motions," noting the need for transparency in the judicial system and presumption of public access to court proceedings.

The Commerce Department failed to consider whether U.S. Steel Corp. had the capacity to fill the aggregate of importer California Steel Industries' Section 232 steel tariff exclusion requests as opposed to just assessing whether U.S. Steel could fill all of them individually, the Court of International Trade held on Nov. 13. Judge M. Miller Baker added that Commerce didn't address its concession that it couldn't timely supply more slab than contracted for with California Steel.

Court of International Trade Judge Gary Katzmann again remanded parts of the Commerce Department remand results on the eighth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on xanthan gum from China. He also granted in part a U.S. motion to dismiss in his Dec. 16 decision.

A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit told the Court of International Trade that it has now twice wrongly told an importer that its first-sale price method to determine the duty level of its cookware was prohibited.

In light of speculation about whether President-elect Donald Trump will use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, observers are revisiting the lone decision in the history of U.S. case law reviewing emergency trade action: U.S. v. Yoshida International.

The Commerce Department has the inherent authority to set procedural requirements in its antidumping duty and countervailing duty proceedings, making its revocation of certain AD orders lawful given that no interested domestic party filed a notice of intent to participate in sunset reviews on the orders, the agency said. Filing its opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Dec. 11, Commerce said the Court of International Trade's rejection of its action usurped the department's clear authority to fix its own procedures (Archroma U.S. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-2159).

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