The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on March 7 said that importer RKW Klerks' net wraps products, used in a machine to bale harvested crops, are not "parts" of harvesting machinery under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Judges Richard Taranto, Raymond Chen and Tiffany Cunningham thus sided with CBP's classification of the products as "warp knit fabric," dutiable at 10% under HTS subheading 6005.39.00.

The Court of International Trade last week ordered a hearing in a countervailing duty injury case on whether any party violated the court's rules regarding the bracketing of confidential information, suggesting that Rule 11 sanctions were on the table.

The Court of International Trade on March 6 sustained the Commerce Department's fourth remand results excluding Star Pipe Products' ductile iron flanges from the antidumping duty order on cast iron pipe fittings from China.

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The U.S. on March 4 opposed exporter Chandan Steel Limited's motion for reconsideration of the Court of International Trade's order sustaining the company's adverse facts available rate in the 2018-19 antidumping duty review on stainless steel flanges from India. The government argued that the court properly found it didn't need to resolve certain issues pertaining to Chandan's allocation method for reporting its costs of production and that Chandan failed to show any "manifest error" in the court's decision to sustain the use of AFA based on the exporter's inadequate reporting of comparison market window period sales (Kisaan Die Tech Private, Ltd. v. United States, CIT # 21-00512).

The Court of International Trade in a decision made public March 5 sustained the Commerce Department's use of exporter Nexco's acquisition costs as a proxy for its suppliers' costs of production in the antidumping duty investigation on raw honey from Argentina.

A Canadian-owned company told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in an opening brief March 1 that its "internal inventory transfer" from a Canadian warehouse to New York was not a sale for export, and its goods shouldn’t have been liquidated using transaction value with a 75.75% “uplift” (Midwest-CBK, LLC v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1142).

The U.S. told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Feb. 29 reply brief that exporter Guizhou Tyre offered a "confused rendition of" the Commerce Department's separate rate analysis, equating the presumption of foreign state control with the lower standard from the agency's "substantial evidence requirement." The government said that, contrary to Guizhou Tyre's claims, it's not Commerce's duty to affirmatively show an absence of Chinese state control (Guizhou Tyre Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2165).

The Court of International Trade on March 1 rejected importer Diamond Tools Technology's request for attorney fees in its suit challenging CBP's finding that the company evaded the antidumping duty order on diamond sawblades from China. Judge Timothy Reif said that since the case presented two issues of "first impression," the government's position was "substantially justified."

The Solar Energy Industries Association argued that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit used the "right tools" of statutory construction to answer the "wrong question" of agency deference in sustaining President Donald Trump's revocation of a tariff exclusion for bifacial solar panels. Filing a response on Feb. 28 to the government's opposition to SEIA's rehearing en banc motion, the industry group said that the U.S. didn't dispute, and "thus concedes," that the Maple Leaf deferential standard is "deeply out of step" with the law set by the Supreme Court, CAFC and other circuit courts (Solar Energy Industries Association v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-1392).