A Commerce Department regulation establishing expedited reviews for countervailing duty investigations was vacated in an Aug. 18 opinion from the Court of International Trade. Chief Judge Mark Barnett penned his fourth opinion in the case, upholding Commerce's finding that it couldn't find any alternative statutory basis on which to find that the regulation can exist.

The Court of International Trade consolidated six challenges to the Commerce Department's denials of Section 232 steel and aluminum exclusion requests in an Aug. 17 order. Judge M. Miller Baker said the cases brought by North American Interpipe, Evraz Inc., Allegheny Technologies Incorporated, AM/NS Calvert, California Steel Industries and Valbruna Slater Stainless will be jointly considered for the "limited purpose of resolving the motions to remand."

The Court of International Trade created an “impermissible distinction” under customs valuation law between goods from non-market and market economies when it denied importer Meyer Corp. first sale valuation, the importer argued in an Aug. 9 opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Kicking off litigation in the much-anticipated appeal proceedings, Meyer argued against the alleged impermissibility of CIT's first sale rejection and for its qualifications for the special valuation status (Meyer Corporation, U.S. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1932).

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The U.S.' voluntary remand request in two Section 232 exclusion cases should be denied in its current form since the government's delayed, tranched solution is "unconscionable," steel importers Allegheny Technologies Inc. and California Steel Industries argued in an Aug. 16 reply brief. Given that Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests are supposed to be decided within 106 days, the Commerce Department's proposed nine to 12 month schedule to reconsider CSI's exclusion requests is "unreasonable" with a "nonsensical" rationale, CSI argued (Allegheny Technologies Incorporated et al. v. U.S., CIT #20-03923)(California Steel Industries, Inc. v. U.S., CIT #21-00015).

Antidumping petitioner U.S. Steel Corporation and the two mandatory respondents in the contested antidumping duty review, SeAH Steel Co. and NEXTEEL Co., submitted their comments on the Commerce Department's remand results at the Court of International Trade. U.S. Steel spoke out against Commerce's flip on its finding of a particular market situation for South Korean steel while the respondents argued against the agency's reallocation of suspended product line and inventory valuation losses to general and administrative expenses and Commerce's decision to deduct a portion of SeAH's G&A expenses of a U.S. affiliate for further manufacturing costs (SeAH Steel Co. v. United States, CIT #19-00086).

The Commerce Department properly calculated antidumping duty review mandatory respondent LG Chem's cost of production (COP) when calculating constructed price, the Court of International Trade said in an Aug. 13 opinion. In a case over the antidumping duty investigation into acetone from South Korea, Judge M. Miller Baker held that Commerce's decision to spurn LG Chem's method for calculating the cost of the materials for making acetone in favor of the method used by the other mandatory respondent, Kumho P&B Chemical, was legal. This decision led to a higher antidumping rate for LG Chem in the investigation's final determination, sticking the exporter with a 25.05% rate. Baker also found that Commerce's rejection of certain of LG Chem's factual submissions was "harmless" and therefore permitted.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should find that pencil importer Prime Time Commerce did not exhaust its administrative remedies by failing to comment on the Commerce Department's remand results in the Court of International Trade, the Department of Justice told the appellate court. Despite its five attempts to obtain “gap-filling” information necessary to determine the correct antidumping rate in an administrative review, Prime Time did not comment on the case's remand results, meaning the importer stands in violation of the exhaustion doctrine that precludes judicial review, DOJ said in its reply brief (Prime Time Commerce, LLC v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-1783).

Plaintiffs, led by American Pacific Plywood, that stand accused of evading antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood from China vigorously challenged CBP's finding of evasion, in an Aug. 5 brief backing their motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade. In another case going after CBP's alleged violations of due process in Enforce and Protect Act investigations (see 2107010085), the plaintiffs argued that CBP's missteps are not merely procedural mistakes, but rather a "failure of essential process that led to profound harm." The violations are so egregious that they "would be unacceptable in any country that prides itself on democratic process -- and for the United States, they are a travesty," the brief said (American Pacific Plywood, Inc. et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #20-03914).

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