CBP properly denied payouts of interest assessed after liquidation, known as delinquency interest, on collected antidumping and countervailing duties under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000, the Court of International Trade said in a series of five nearly identical opinions. Judge Timothy Stanceu ruled that it must rely on CBP's interpretation of how to administer the CDSOA and define how interest is earned on AD/CV duties given ambiguities in the statute pertaining to delinquency interest. The court also held that given that the interest is put into a single sum after liquidation, it loses its "individual character" and is no longer interest earned on the duties.

The Commerce Department properly found that Shelter Forest International Acquisition's hardwood plywood exports didn't circumvent the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood from China, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a June 15 opinion. Affirming the Court of International Trade's opinion, the Federal Circuit said that the merchandise was commercially available before Dec. 8, 2016, and was thus not later-developed merchandise that circumvented the AD/CVD orders.

CBP no longer believes importers Global Aluminum Distributor and Hialeah Aluminum Supply evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China by transshipping them through Dominican manufacturer Kingtom Aluminio. Filing its remand results at the Court of International Trade in a case related to the Enforce and Protect Act investigation, CBP said that after taking another look at the record, it cannot conclude that evasion took place (Global Aluminum Distributor v. United States, CIT #21-00198).

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Plaintiffs in an antidumping case failed to exhaust their administrative remedies when challenging the Commerce Department's decision to issue a questionnaire in lieu of on-site verification due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, the Court of International Trade ruled in a June 14 opinion. Judge Stephen Vaden said that the AD petitioner, Ellwood City Forge Co., had "multiple opportunities" to counter the verification methodology, but failed to do so administratively.

The Commerce Department properly found that electricity was not provided below cost in South Korea in a countervailing duty investigation, the Court of International Trade said in a June 13 opinion. Following a remand from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said that both of the remanded issues -- Commerce's reliance on the preferential-rate standard and its failure to address the Korean Power Exchange's (KPX's) impact on the South Korean electricity market as rendering cost-recovery analysis -- now comply with the appellate court's ruling.

President Donald Trump's move to expand the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs onto "derivative" products was part of the president's original "plan of action," thus making the expansion legal, the U.S. argued in a June 10 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Centering the reply on a key Federal Circuit opinion, Transpacific Steel v. U.S., which said the president can carry out certain Section 232 tariff action beyond procedural deadlines, DOJ told the appellate court that the derivatives expansion sought to carry out the president's original goal of reaching an 80% domestic capacity utilization rate for steel and aluminum.

Judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a June 10 oral argument probed an antidumping petitioner's position that a supposed "methodological error" committed by a respondent in the reporting of its home market sales justified the use of total adverse facts available. Hitachi Energy USA, formerly known as ABB Enterprise, argued that errors committed in reporting the gross unit price for one home market sale justified tossing out the entire U.S. and home market sales database. Judges Pauline Newman, Kara Stoll and Leonard Stark asked counsel for Hitachi and respondent Hyundai Electric & Energy Systems questions over this position (Hyundai Electric v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2312).

Importer Royal Brush Manufacturing failed to show that the Court of International Trade wrongly held that CBP did not violate the company's due process rights in an Enforce and Protect Act investigation, the U.S. argued in a June 9 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In its opening brief, Royal Brush failed to cite "any legal authority" to back its theory that the trade court erred in shielding the business confidential information (BCI) from disclosure, DOJ said (Royal Brush Manufacturing Inc. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1226).

The Commerce Department appropriately found that an Australian exporter did not reimburse an affiliated importer for antidumping duties paid and thus rightly decided not to deduct the amount of antidumping duties paid from the exporter's U.S. price in an AD case, the Court of International Trade said. In a a May 31 opinion that was made public June 10, Judge Richard Eaton said that the sale between exporter BlueScope Steel (AIS) and the affiliated importer BlueScope Steel Americas (BSA) was a "garden variety transaction among an exporter, an importer, and an unaffiliated purchaser."