Solar exporters and importers, led by the American Clean Power Association, said a suit challenging the Commerce Department's duty pause on solar cells and modules from four Southeast Asian countries is "moot" due to a failure to identify an injury that would be redressable through the retroactive imposition of AD/CVD (Auxin Solar v. United States, CIT # 23-00274).

The Court of International Trade has jurisdiction over importer Retractable Technologies' suit against the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's 100% Section 301 rate hike on needles and syringes, given that the court has already acknowledged its ability to hear cases on agency action taken under presidential direction, Retractable said. Responding to the government's motion to dismiss the case Nov. 19, Retractable pointed to the trade court's recent decision in the case granting a preliminary injunction (PI) on the liquidation of the importer's entries subject to the duties (Retractable Technologies v. U.S., CIT # 24-00185).

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The U.S. opposed Nov. 15 a Mexican tomato exporter’s bid to intervene in a case challenging the results of a 27-year-old antidumping duty investigation (see 2411080036) (Bioparques de Occidente v. United States, CIT Consol. # 19-00204).

Various companies that were originally excluded from an expedited countervailing duty review on Canadian softwood lumber asked the Court of International Trade to clarify that they're due refunds of CVD cash deposits (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. United States, CIT # 19-00122).

Raising many of the same arguments seen in similar cases (see 2407010059 and 2407030064), a Thai solar panel exporter said Nov. 15 that the U.S. was “misstating” findings and contradicting itself in its own analysis when it found that solar panel importers were circumventing antidumping and countervailing duties on solar panels from China based on only one factor in the usual country-of-origin analysis (Trina Solar Science & Technology v. U.S., CIT # 23-00227).

The Commerce Department continued to use German third-country comparison market data in the antidumping duty investigation on mushrooms from the Netherlands on remand at the Court of International Trade. Addressing the court's concern about whether exporter Prochamp's sales to Germany were actually sold in Germany, the agency said the record lets Commerce "reasonably estimate the percentage of German-language-labelled products sold to Prochamp’s largest German customer," which then may have been sold downstream in another German-speaking country "(i.e., Austria)" (Giorgio Foods v. United States, CIT # 23-00133).

The Court of International Trade defined the term "partners" under the statute regarding affiliation analyses in antidumping duty cases as "a for profit cooperative endeavor in which parties share in risk and reward."

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Judges Kimberly Moore and Richard Taranto probed claims from both exporter Oman Fasteners and the U.S. during oral argument in a suit on the Commerce Department's selection of a surrogate financial statement in an administrative review of an antidumping duty order on steel nails from Oman (Mid Continent Steel & Wire v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1039).

Congress gave the Commerce Department wide latitude to go after "masked" dumping, the Court of International Trade said in a decision made public Nov. 15 that upheld the agency's differential pricing analysis.