Importer Root Sciences was denied on March 15 its motion for reconsideration of a Court of International Trade ruling that CBP's seizure of Root's imports precluded a deemed exclusion, stripping the court of jurisdiction over the case. Judge Gary Katzmann said that because the reconsideration motion "amounts to nothing more than a disagreement with the court’s reasoning on matters fully litigated, devoid of showing manifest error, it is insufficient to warrant reconsideration and is denied."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should affirm the Commerce Department's finding that Al Ghurair Iron & Steel circumvented the antidumping and countervailing duties on corrosion-resistant steel (CORE) products from China by way of transshipment via the United Arab Emirates, defendant-appellee Steel Dynamics said March 14 in a reply brief filed with the appeals court. The UAE company's processing was minor or insignificant, marked by a low level of investment in the UAE, Steel Dynamics said (Al Ghurair Iron & Steel v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1199).

The risk of court-annexed mediation in an antidumping duty case "far outweighs the benefit," defendant-intervenor GEO Specialty Chemicals said in a March 14 brief opposing plaintiff Nagase & Co.'s bid for mediation, telling the trade court that it "vigorously" opposes Nagase's claim that an alleged error in Nakase's AD rate is easily correctable (Nagase & Co. v. United States, CIT #21-00574).

The Commerce Department's rejection of three U.S. chloropicrin producers' filing in an antidumping duty sunset review -- which resulted in the revocation of the nearly 40-year-old order on chloropicrin from China -- was a "marked abuse of discretion" given that the producers' lawyer was impaired with "medical and technical issues," plaintiff-appellants, led by Trinity Manufacturing, said in a March 14 opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Trinity Manufacturing v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1329).

July 6 marks the fourth anniversary of the List 1 Section 301 tariffs' taking effect on Chinese imports, and the 1974 Trade Act requires their expiration after four years, “unless some conditions are met,” said David Olave, a Sandler Travis associate and trade policy adviser, on a recent podcast. “No unilateral 301 action that I know has made it through the four years, so we’re about to witness trade policy procedural history,” he said.

The Court of International Trade remanded an antidumping duty evasion case, in a March 11 order for CBP to fully consider the record. The agency requested the remand after it found out plaintiff Norca Industrial Company was not privy to documents relating to a third-party's visit to a Vietnamese manufacturer's production site. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves limited the remand to the issue of the whole record and not the other issues raised by Norca.

A Mexican factory that was shut down by the government doesn't need to include costs incurred during the time it was inoperative in the parent company's computed value calculations, CBP said in a newly released Jan. 7 ruling. The facility, which is owned by Chamberlain, was shut down in March 2020 by state authorities in Sonora, Mexico, as part of an emergency decree closing all nonessential businesses in response to COVID-19. CBP's ruling hinged on the fact that the costs incurred during the time of the government-mandated shutdown were "not employed in the production of the imported merchandise."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a March 11 order that the Commerce Department did not properly support its position that a particular market situation existed affecting inputs to oil country tubular goods from South Korea. Finding that three of Commerce's five reasons for finding a PMS were not backed by enough evidence, the Federal Circuit upheld the Court of International Trade's identical ruling. The appellate court also remanded Commerce's differential pricing analysis -- used to uncover "masked" dumping -- for relying on a statistical test that did not fulfill certain conditions to properly run the test.

Mayer Brown wants nearly $3 million in legal fees over a False Claims Act case it won for Island Industries in which a California district court said that Japanese manufacturer Sigma Corporation avoided antidumping duties. Petitioning the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Mayer Brown said that the $3 million request for fees, costs and expenses -- amounting to around 11.3% of the total judgment -- is "eminitely reasonably and justified" given Sigma's complex defense of its actions in multiple venues (United States v. Vandewater International, C.D. Cal. #17-04393).

Exporter China Customs Manufacturing's solar panel mount assemblies are "fully and completely assembled" at the time they're imported, thus qualifying for a finished merchandise exclusion from the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, CCM argued. Filing its opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on March 8, CCM, along with Greentec Engineering, argued that the record shows that the solar panel mount assemblies satisfy each of the requirements for the exclusion, including being fully assembled at the time of entry (China Custom Manufacturing v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1345).