Plaintiffs in the massive Section 301 litigation "have every intention" to appeal their case challenging the lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs on China to the Supreme Court, Matt Nicely, lead counsel for the companies, told the Court of International Trade during a Nov. 4 status conference.

The Commerce Department can limit its comparator group in assessing whether a certain enterprise or industry is the "predominant user" of a subsidy for purposes of determining de facto specificity, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Dec. 5. Judges Jimmie Reyna, Sharon Prost and Raymond Chen said the limitation on the comparator group must only be "sufficiently reasonable."

In a Dec. 2 motion for judgment, exporter Kukdo Chemical said the Commerce Department wrongly determined that China’s subsidization of the country’s own chemical industry conferred a transnational countervailable subsidy to it itself, an unrelated Korean producer (Kumho P&B Chemicals v. United States, CIT Consol. # 25-00143).

The Court of International Trade erred in ruling that importer Blue Sky The Color of Imagination's planning calendars are diaries under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 4820.10.2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Dec. 4. Judges Alan Lourie, William Bryson and Raymond Chen said the trade court violated the principle of stare decisis by skirting the CAFC's prior interpretation of the term "diary."

A Wisconsin federal court on Dec. 1 dismissed a case from a former prisoner at the Nunan Chishan Prison in China against Milwaukee Electric Tool and its parent company, Techtronic Industries, for allegedly importing goods made with forced labor. Judge Brett Ludwig of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin held that the civil remedy of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), which is the statute the prisoner sued under, doesn't apply to conduct occurring outside the U.S. (Xu Lun v. Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp., E.D. Wis. # 24-803).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Dec. 2 granted the government's voluntary remand motion for the Commerce Department to reconsider its use of the Cohen's d test in an antidumping duty case in light of the Federal Circuit's decisions in Stupp v. U.S. and Marmen v. U.S. largely invalidating the agency's use of the test, which is used to detect "masked" dumping (Mid Continent Steel & Wire v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1556).

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The Commerce Department unlawfully found that the South Korean government's provision of electricity for less than adequate remuneration (LTAR) was de facto specific based on heavy consumption by the chemical industry, exporter Kumho P&B Chemicals argued in a Dec. 2 motion for summary judgment at the Court of International Trade (Kumho P&B Chemicals v. United States, CIT Consol. # 25-00143).

The Commerce Department failed to adequately explain its treatment of costs needed to convert steel plates into wind towers in the 2021-22 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on utility scale wind towers from South Korea, the Court of International Trade held on Dec. 2. Judge Leo Gordon said the U.S. provided "inadequate" explanation of the decision to use respondent Dongkuk’s reported conversion costs instead of the costs reported by the petitioner, the Wind Tower Trade Coalition.

The Commerce Department abused its discretion in rejecting information submitted by countervailing duty respondent Ternium Mexico regarding three alleged subsidy programs in the CVD investigation on corrosion-resistant steel products, Ternium argued in a Nov. 26 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Ternium Mexico v. United States, CIT # 25-00236).