The Court of International Trade on April 3 again sent back the Commerce Department's decision to countervail exporter KG Dongbu Steel's three debt-to-equity restructurings after initially declining to countervail them in the preceding three countervailing duty reviews on corrosion-resistant steel products from South Korea.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 4 sustained the Commerce Department's decision that Australian exporter BlueScope Steel (AIS) didn't reimburse its affiliated U.S. importer, BlueScope Steel Americas, for antidumping duties. Judges Kimberly Moore, Todd Hughes and Leonard Stark echoed the Court of International Trade in finding that it would have been "unreasonable" for the exporter to include the AD in the price charged to the importer because the "exporter itself was not responsible for those duties."

Grace Ocean Private Limited, owner of the vessel that brought down a segment of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last week, filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on April 1 seeking to avoid liability "for any loss or damage arising out of" the vessel's collision with the bridge. The manager of the M/V Dali vessel, Synergy Marine, also joined the petition (In the Matter of the Petition of Grace Ocean Private Limited, D. Md. # 24-00941).

Countervailing duty petitioner Rebar Trade Action Coalition opened its case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit against the Commerce Department's decision on remand finding that shipbuilding company Nur Gemicilik ve Tic, an affiliate of respondent Kaptan Demir, is not Kaptan's cross-owned input supplier. Filing an opening brief on April 2, the petitioner said that Commerce originally got it right in cross-attributing Nur's subsidies to Kaptan in the 2018 CVD review on rebar from Turkey (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1431).

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The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security continued to deny importer Seneca Food's eight Section 232 steel tariff exclusion requests for its tin mill products on remand at the Court of International Trade. BIS said that U.S. Steel can make the same products in a sufficient quantity and in a timely manner to satisfy Seneca's needs, prompting the rejection of the exclusion bids (Seneca Foods Corp. v. United States, CIT # 22-00243).

The Court of International Trade in a March 11 decision made public April 1 sent back the Commerce Department's departure from the expected method in setting the separate rate companies' rate in the 2016-17 review on the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China.

NEW YORK -- In a marathon four-and-a-half hour oral argument session last week, Court of International Trade Judge Stephen Vaden sharply questioned the International Trade Commission's redaction process in an injury proceeding on phosphate fertilizers (OCP v. United States, CIT Consol. # 21-00219).

The Court of International Trade on April 1 granted the New Zealand government's motion to dissolve a preliminary injunction banning its fish exports in a challenge to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2020 findings that New Zealand's standards for its West Coast North Island inshore trawl and set net fisheries were comparable to U.S. regulations.

The U.S. brought a customs penalty suit against importer E-Dong U.S.A. for failure to pay federal excise tax on entries of soju bottles from South Korea. Filing a complaint March 28 at the Court of International Trade, the government said that the company entered the soju, a Korean spirit, via "material or false statement" by failing to reference any of the owed excise tax (U.S. v. E-Dong, U.S.A., CIT # 24-00066).