The Commerce Department "effectuated Congress' intent" when it found that U.S. seafood seller Luscious Seafood is not a bona fide wholesaler of the domestic like product, petitioner Catfish Farmers of America said in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. The petitioner said that while Congress didn't define the term "wholesaler" in the antidumping laws, the "overall text, structure, and purpose of the law do not reflect any intention to allow parties with merely tangential or fugitive wholesaling activity to force Commerce into action -- particularly for potentially manipulative ends" (Luscious Seafood v. United States, CIT # 24-00069).

The Commerce Department decided not to countervail benefits received by countervailing duty respondent Kaptan Demir from Turkey's Banking and Insurance and Transaction Tax exemptions on remand at the Court of International Trade. The agency said that while there was not enough information to find that the exemptions were de facto specific, it faulted its lack of time on remand to gather sufficient information (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 23-00131).

The Commerce Department's exceeded its statutory authority when it revoked an antidumping duty order on the grounds that it never received a notice of intent to participate from an interested domestic party in a sunset review, petitioner Archroma U.S. argued. Filing a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Archroma said Commerce's authority to ensure the "integrity of its procedures" doesn't allow it to "adopt measures exceeding its statutory authority" (Archroma U.S. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-2159).

The Commerce Department doesn't fail to act when it denies a Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion request, the Court of International Trade held. Instead, the denial is a "decision" and "not an action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed," Judge Stephen Vaden said, dismissing a host of claims from importer Prysmian Cables and Systems USA against Commerce's rejection of its exclusion requests.

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Responding to U.S. opposition to its summary judgment motion, importer Mitsubishi Power Americas said Jan. 17 that the government “proffered nothing to dispute” expert testimony that shows its products are neither filters nor purifiers and misunderstood the way they actually work (Mitsubishi Power Americas v. U.S., CIT #21-00573).

Chinese manufacturer Camel Group Co. took to the Court of International Trade last week to contest its placement on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Entity List, arguing that the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force "utterly disregarded, ignored and trampled" its due process rights in a "flawed and poorly executed process." The company said FLETF illicitly conducted the process in the shadows, refusing to offer it access to any of the evidence used against the company, and that the decision to deny its petition to be removed from the list wasn't backed by substantial evidence (Camel Group Co. v. United States, CIT # 25-00022).

The Court of International Trade on Jan. 17 upheld the Commerce Department's decision on remand to not countervail three debt-to-equity infusions to exporter KG Dongbu Steel Co. in the 2019 countervailing duty review on corrosion-resistant steel products from South Korea. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves held that the evidence doesn't directly support a finding that the SouthKorean government pressured non-governmental institutions to take part in debt restructuring.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 17 unanimously upheld a law requiring China’s ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban on the popular social media application in the U.S.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) said comparability findings are coming by Sept. 1, 2025, for "all harvesting nations that did not submit an application for a comparability finding" and all harvesting nations the NMFS has already preliminarily said will be denied a comparability finding. The announcement came as part of a settlement of a lawsuit from three wildlife advocacy groups against the NMFS's failure to ban fish or fish products exported from fisheries that don't meet U.S. bycatch standards under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (Natural Resources Defense Council v. Gina Raimondo, CIT # 24-00148).