The Court of International Trade on July 22 sustained the Commerce Department's 2020-21 review of the countervailing duty order on common alloy aluminum sheet from India. Judge Joseph Laroski said Commerce's decisions to find that the provision of coal for less than adequate remuneration was de facto specific and to use U.N. Comtrade data as a benchmark in measuring the coal subsidy were supported by substantial evidence. The agency's specificity finding rested on the fact that respondent Hindalco, "like a typical utility provider, engages in 'power generation,'" and that two "power" industries "appear to use a substantial majority of the coal provided by" India's state-run coal supplier, Coal India.
Despite it being based on only two of five mandatory factors considered in a country-of-origin analysis, Court of International Trade Judge Joseph Laroski sustained July 21 the Commerce Department’s determination that the manufacturing process of aluminum foil importer Hanon System’s South Korean producer was minor and insignificant. Echoing similar recent decisions (see 2505160045, 2505190059 and 2505190054), Laroski said Commerce reasonably weighed the five factors in its decision.
The Court of International Trade on July 18 sustained the results of the Commerce Department's 2021-22 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on stainless steel sheet and strip in coils from Taiwan. Judge Gary Katzmann held that Commerce properly calculated the rate for the non-selected companies "equal to the expected method," which is a weighted average of the two mandatory respondents' adverse facts available rate. Importer CME Acquisitions failed to show that the resulting 21.1% rate isn't "reasonably reflective of the non-selected companies' potential dumping margin," Katzmann held. In addition, the judge said CME Acquisitions "had ample notice and opportunity to provide evidence to the contrary."
The Court of International Trade on July 18 granted the government's motion for default judgment against importer Rayson Global and its owner Doris Cheng, ordering the defendants to pay a civil penalty totaling nearly $3.4 million along with all duties, taxes and fees that remain unpaid on the unliquidated entries of mattress innersprings at issue in the case. Judge Timothy Stanceu granted the motion for default judgment after previously rejecting the government's valuation of the merchandise due to its lack of factual support. This time around, Stanceu found that the U.S. properly pleaded that Rayson and Cheng negligently declared their Chinese-origin innerspring as being from Thailand, avoiding ordinary 6% duties, Section 301 duties and 234.51% antidumping duties.
The Court of International Trade on July 16 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in the antidumping duty investigation on mushrooms from the Netherlands, upholding the agency's decision to select Germany as the third country for determining respondent Prochamp's normal value. Judge M. Miller Baker said Commerce adequately addressed the issue in Prochamp's German data, which indicated the company's German buyer likely resold Prochamp's mushrooms in Germany and another country. Commerce's efforts to proximate how much of Prochamp's product sold to Germany is resold in another country, along with the agency's subsequent finding that Germany still provided the best comparison market, is adequately supported, the court held.
The Court of International Trade on July 11 upheld the Commerce Department's decision to grant exporter East Sea Seafoods a separate antidumping duty rate in the 2019-20 review of the AD order on catfish from Vietnam. Judge M. Miller Baker also upheld Commerce's decision to base exporter Green Farms' separate rate on a simple average of respondent NTSF Seafood's zero percent margin and East Sea's adverse facts available rate.
The Court of International Trade on July 9 sustained CBP's finding that importers American Pacific Plywood, InterGlobal Forest and U.S. Global Forest evaded the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on plywood from China through Cambodian manufacturer LB Wood. Judge M. Miller Baker held that all that's required for liability to attach under the Enforce and Protect Act is "the entry of covered merchandise through any material false statement or material omission that avoids antidumping and countervailing duties, except those resulting from clerical errors," noting that even clerical errors are evasion if they are "part of a pattern of negligent conduct." The judge also held that CBP isn't precluded from finding that shipments from LB Wood are of Chinese origin in light of two other CIT cases the agency settled in which it said shipments from LB Wood are of Cambodian origin. Baker said the doctrine of judicial estoppel doesn't apply here, however, since CBP didn't succeed in advancing a position "directly inconsistent" with its theory in the present case, given that its initial position in the two settled cases was identical to its position here "but it then ran up the white flag."
The Court of International Trade on July 3 sustained CBP's finding that importers Newtrend USA, Starille and Nutrawave evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on glycine from China. Judge Stephen Vaden said the evasion determination, which found that the importers transshipped Chinese glycine in Indonesia, was supported by substantial evidence. Following "an extensive in-person verification" of exporter PT Newtrend's Indonesian factory, CBP found the exporter couldn't make glycine at the scale PT Newtrend and the importers claimed. Vaden said there was substantial evidence for CBP's theory that PT Newtrend acquired glycine from its Chinese parent company to export to the U.S. and that the importers "offer no alternative explanation for how PT Newtrend acquired its glycine."
The Court of International Trade on July 3 granted importer Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations' motion to include three documents the Commerce Department declined to put on the record in the antidumping duty investigation into truck and bus tires from Thailand. Judge Gary Katzmann said he needed the three documents to be on the record to properly review whether Commerce permissibly rejected them in the investigation. Katzmann also declined to consolidate Bridgetstone's suit with another case challenging the same AD investigation filed by the petitioner, United Steelworkers.
The Court of International Trade in a pair of decisions on June 25 called for future litigation to clarify whether the Commerce Department's interpretation of the "subassemblies" provision in the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China comports with AD/CVD law.