The Court of International Trade on Aug. 1 remanded the Commerce Department's rejection of exporter Jindal Poly's affiliate questionnaire response as untimely in the countervailing duty administrative review on polyethylene terephthalate film, sheet and strip from India for the 2021 review period. Judge Mark Barnett held that the rejection of the submission was an "abuse of discretion," finding that the agency failed to adequately consider various facts, including the "early stage of the proceeding," the selection of Jindal for "individual examination only after requests for review of all other subject companies" were withdrawn and whether "accuracy consideration" outweighed the "burden on the agency."

The Court of International Trade on July 31 sustained in part and remanded in part the Commerce Department's scope ruling on importer School Specialty's No. 2 pencils made in the Philippines with Chinese-origin raw material inputs. Judge M. Miller Baker held that Commerce failed to discuss how it balanced its various findings after conducting a "substantial transformation" analysis and looking at where the pencil's "essential component" was made. However, Baker individually sustained Commerce's conclusions regarding the different factors found in these analyses.

The Court of International Trade on July 29 denied importers Johanna Foods' and Johanna Beverage Company's application for a temporary restraining order against President Donald Trump's threatened 50% tariff on Brazil. Judge Timothy Reif held that the "indefiniteness of the threatened action," which Trump said will take effect on Aug. 1, "dooms" the importers' "request for emergency relief in the form of a TRO." The judge said neither Trump nor any agency "has taken final action that is subject to judicial review by this Court."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on July 29 sustained the Commerce Department's 2018-19 review of the antidumping duty order on cold-rolled steel flat products from Turkey in which the agency's decision to use Turkish lira to value respondent Habas Sinai ve Tibbi Gazlar Istihsal Endustrisi's home-market sales. While Habas said Commerce had to follow its precedent by using the respondent's dollar-denominated sales, Judges Kimberly Moore, Todd Hughes and Tiffany Cunningham held that Commerce had no such obligation, since Habas failed to "reconcile its lira-denominated payment records with its reported dollar prices." The judges also rejected the respondent's claim that the use of the lira-denominated prices distorted the AD margin calculation, finding that Commerce properly relied on Habas' reported lira values, which were the only reliable prices.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on July 28 upheld the validity of the Commerce Department's non-market economy policy in antidumping proceedings despite the fact that Commerce had not codified the policy in its regulations at the time the policy was challenged. Judges Todd Hughes, William Bryson and Leonard Stark said there's a long line of CAFC cases finding that Commerce can lawfully assign an NME-wide AD rate to a cooperative mandatory respondent that has failed to rebut the presumption of foreign state control. In addition, the judges said even if these cases didn't exist, the policy didn't require notice-and-comment rulemaking, since the validity of an "evidentiary presumption turns on its rationality." The judges then held that there's "a sound and rational connection between a finding that a country is an NME country and the inference that exporters in that country are subject to government control."

In a July 21 opinion made public July 25, Court of International Trade Judge Claire Kelly ruled that, when deciding to impose a double remedies offset in an antidumping duty review with a parallel countervailing duty review, the Commerce Department must calculate whether a countervailable subsidy would have decreased a non-market economy exporter’s prices and dumping margin, not whether the exporter’s prices actually declined during a review period. However, she sustained the department’s choice of Romania as a surrogate in AD/CVD reviews of aluminum foil from China (Jiangsu Dingsheng New Materials Joint-Stock Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00264).

The Court of International Trade on July 28 denied importer Detroit Axle's motion for a preliminary injunction against President Donald Trump's decision to eliminate the de minimis threshold for Chinese goods. Judges Gary Katzmann, Timothy Reif and Jane Restani said Detroit Axle can't succeed in "obtaining the relief it seeks," since the trade court already granted the relief the importer seeks in the lead case on Trump's tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed that relief pending appeal. The court then stayed the remainder of Detroit Axle's case pending resolution of the lead IEEPA tariff case.

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."