The Court of International Trade on Nov. 12 granted the government's motion for default judgment in a customs penalty suit against importer Rago Tires, imposing a $14,108.87 civil penalty against the company. Judge Joseph Laroski found that Rago violated customs laws "by means of negligence" and not gross negligence, as the U.S. argued. The judge said that although the company's filing error, in which it failed to declare its goods were subject to antidumping and countervailing duties, was "material," the facts don't show "willful, wanton, or reckless misconduct."

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 29 sustained the Commerce Department's 2021-22 review of the antidumping duty order on strontium chromate from Austria. Judge Joseph Laroski rejected petitioner Lumimove's claims against Commerce's findings that respondent Habich wasn't affiliated with its North American sales agent and that normal value should be calculated using Habich's slaves to Mexico. Regarding the agency's affiliation finding, Laroski said that Lumimove's claims boiled down to: "Commerce should have asked Habich different questions." The judge rejected this assertion, finding that the agency "acted reasonably by consulting the relevant legal framework in structuring its inquiry into affiliation," adapting its questions to Lumimove's concerns, conducting a "robust verification" and "distilling the law and facts that informed its conclusion."

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 23 remanded the Commerce Department's use of antidumping respondent Toyo Kohan's shipment date as its date of sale for the company's U.S. sales in the 2022-23 review of the AD order on diffusion-annealed, nickel-plated flat-rolled steel products from Japan. Judge Jane Restani said Commerce's use of Toyo Kohan's shipment date lacked a "reasoned explanation" and wasn't supported by the record, since the billing documentation at the time of shipping is "virtually meaningless" because it doesn't necessarily show the "quantity or price in the purchase order or the final invoice." The judge said Commerce should consider the role an "agreed-to pricing formula" may play in its date of sale analysis, since where such a formula is present, "there may be a disconnect in the record data" for the date of sale and the sale price.

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 22 rejected exporter BGH Edelstahl Siegen's claim that the Commerce Department improperly included various products from the company in its normal value calculation in the 2022 review of the antidumping duty order on forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany. Judge Mark Barnett said BGH improperly tried adding an end-use restriction to the order's scope in arguing that some of its products sold in the home market aren't within the scope of the order. The scope's language covering fluid end blocks, "which are typically used in the manufacture or service of hydraulic pumps," doesn't use clear enough language to impose an end-use restriction, Barnett said.

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 20 sustained the Commerce Department's decision on remand to exclude importer Elysium Tiles' composite tile from the scope of the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on ceramic tile from China. After being told by the court to consider the (k)(2) scope factors, Commerce flipped its scope finding on Elysium's tile to exclude the company's products from the orders. Judge Jane Restani reviewed the agency's (k)(2) analysis and found that while for three of them, the products' ultimate uses, channels of trade and means of advertisement, favored including the composite tile in the orders' scope, these factors are outweighed by the differences in the products' physical characteristics and user expectations.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Oct. 15 affirmed the validity of the International Trade Commission's affirmative critical circumstances determination on imports of raw honey from Vietnam, which imposed retroactive antidumping duties on the subject goods in the 90-day window prior to the AD investigation's preliminary determination. Judges Richard Taranto, Alan Lourie and Tiffany Cunningham rejected the claim from a group of honey importers that the ITC was required to find that a surge of imports made after the filing of the AD petition had an adverse impact after the final AD order was issued. Writing for the court, Taranto said the relevant statute, 19 U.S.C. Section 1673d(b)(4)(A)(i), "does not demand a determination focused on the time after the antidumping duty order issues."

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 10 sustained the Commerce Department's decision not to treat interest accrued on respondent Koehler Paper's unpaid antidumping duties as an indirect selling expense in the 2021-22 AD review of thermal paper from Germany. Judge Gary Katzmann said interest accrued on sales made prior to the review period doesn't qualify for either the statutory or regulatory definition of an indirect selling expense, since the interest doesn't relate to the sale of "subject merchandise," namely merchandise sold during the review period. The judge added that a prior CIT decision upholding the treatment of interest on AD duties as an indirect selling expense didn't directly consider whether such interest met the statutory or regulatory definition of an indirect selling expense.

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 9 sustained the Commerce Department's 2021-22 review of the antidumping duty order on utility-scale wind towers from Malaysia. Judge Gary Katzmann held that Commerce permissibly decided not to apply an adjustment to the cost of production to "account for production volume decreases before a shutdown" and selected Malaysian companies Mycron Steel and Alpine Pipe Manufacturing as the surrogate companies for calculating respondent CS Wind's constructed value profit. Regarding the cost of production adjustment, Katzmann noted that the agency properly captured the shutdown-related costs in a separate variable submitted by CS Wind.

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 9 sustained the Commerce Department's decision, made on remand, to exclude seven types of magnesia carbon bricks imported by Fedmet Resources from the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on magnesia carbon bricks from China. While the petitioner, the Magnesia Carbon Bricks Fair Trade Committee, argued that Judge Miller Baker previously misinterpreted a 2014 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in finding that the addition of any alumina to the bricks excludes them from the orders, Baker was unconvinced. The judge said the petitioner in the underlying AD/CVD investigations explicitly disclaimed the inclusion of bricks with any alumina within the scope of the orders. Baker noted that while this could allow importers to skirt duty liability by merely adding tiny amounts of alumina, affected U.S. producers could turn to anti-circumvention proceedings.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Oct. 8 affirmed the Court of International Trade's rejection of the Commerce Department's application of its "cross-ownership regulation" to countervailing duty respondent Gujarat Fluorochemicals in the CVD investigation of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) resin from India. In the investigation, Commerce attributed a subsidy received by Inox Wind to Gujarat, since Inox sold the respondent wind power that constituted only 1.03% of total power consumed by the company.