The Court of International Trade on June 10 sustained the antidumping and countervailing duty evasion finding against importer Phoenix Metal for transshipping cast iron soil pipe from China through Cambodia. Judge Jane Restani said that CBP supported its finding with a wealth of evidence and that the agency's finding that Phoenix had some production capacity in Cambodia isn't enough to sink the evasion determination. Restani also rejected a host of due process claims made by Phoenix, though the court said a plaintiff could show that lasting harm was suffered by CBP's failure to provide notice of the establishment of interim measures. However, Phoenix failed to make this showing in the present case.

The Court of International Trade on June 5 remanded the Commerce Department's surrogate value picks for the main factors of production, labor and by- and co-products of Vietnamese catfish in the 16th review of the AD order on the frozen fish fillets from Vietnam. Regarding the labor data, Judge M. Miller Baker said Commerce can't overlook issues with the Indian data it used simply due to its preference for using surrogate values from one country. However, the court sustained Commerce's choice of Indian financial statements over Indonesian financial statements.

The Court of International Trade on May 31 sustained parts and remanded parts of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on mobile access equipment from China. Judge M. Miller Baker sent back Commerce's surrogate value data on ocean-shipping costs for respondent Zhejiang Dingli Machinery Co., which was taken from Descartes, Freightos and Drewry, along with the SV data for minor fabricated steel components. However, Baker sustained Commerce's surrogate value picks related to two of Dingli's motor inputs. The court also said Commerce appropriately accepted certain factual information submissions from Dingli, despite the submissions violating the agency's regulations, since it was the only chance for Dingli to rebut the SV data on the record.

The Court of International Trade on May 31 said that duty drawback claims are deemed liquidated after one year, as long as the underlying import entries are liquidated and final, and that "finality" is defined as the end of the 180-day protest window for the underlying entry. As a result of this clarification, Judge Jane Restani granted one of importer Performance Additives' duty drawback claims on its polymer and plastic chemical entries. The other claim's entries weren't liquidated and final on its one-year anniversary, precluding deemed liquidation.

The Court of International Trade on May 30 remanded the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available against Apiario Diamante Comercial Exportadora and Apiario Diamante Producao e Comercial de Mel, collectively doing business as Supermel, in the antidumping duty investigation on raw honey from Brazil. Judge Timothy Stanceu said that minor discrepancies between data submitted from small, unaffiliated beekeeper suppliers and the data submitted by Supermel isn't a valid reason to not use the exporter's acquisition costs as a proxy for the actual cost of production data. In addition, the court rejected Commerce's claim that Supermel's responses to five of the agency's questions were deficient, finding that the "principal information that Commerce found Supermel to have withheld was provided in full" by the company.

The Court of International Trade on May 28 told the Commerce Department to conduct sunset reviews of antidumping duty orders on stilbenic optical brightening agents from Taiwan and China, after the agency revoked the orders after not receiving a timely notice of intent to participate in the reviews. Judge M. Miller Baker said Commerce's regulation, which calls for revocation of the order after no such notice is received, violates the applicable statute, which says Commerce shall conduct the review after receiving either a notice of intent to participate or a substantive response. Because U.S. producer Archroma timely filed a substantive response, Commerce should have started the reviews.

The Court of International Trade on May 28 denied the government's motion for partial reconsideration in its customs bond penalty case against surety company Aegis Security Insurance. After the court previously said the U.S. violated an implied contractual term of reasonableness in waiting eight years to demand payment on a customs bond, the government claimed it couldn't reasonably anticipate this would be an issue in this case. Judge Stephen Vaden said the U.S. was clearly on notice this was an issue and, as a result, waived any claims regarding the reasonable time requirement.

The 323.12% antidumping rate received by quartz countertop exporter Antique Group in an administrative review after it missed a questionnaire deadline by five hours is an abuse of the Commerce Department’s discretion, Court of International Trade Judge Mark Barnett said in a May 28 opinion. The judge ordered Commerce to accept the exporter’s late filing; he also determined that the department’s application of adverse facts available to Antique Group would have been unreasonable even if the court had upheld its rejection of the exporter’s late filing. Addressing petitioner Cambria’s claim, Barnett also concluded that Commerce must also reconsider or further explain its departure from the expected method in calculating nonselected respondents' rate.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on May 20 ruled that the Court of International Trade was wrong to establish a 50% threshold when determining whether demand for an agricultural product is "substantially dependent" on its raw upstream iteration for purposes of assigning countervailing duties. Judges Sharon Prost, William Bryson and Leonard Stark said the Commerce Department has significant leeway in determining whether substantial dependence exists. In the present case, which assessed subsidies to Spanish raw olive growers, the court affirmed Commerce's finding of substantial dependence, finding that errors in the agency's analysis of dependence were nonprejudicial to the affected Spanish ripe olive exporters.

The Court of International Trade on May 16 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping duty investigation of mattresses from Cambodia. Judge Gary Katzmann said Commerce, under both its major input and transactions disregarded rules, properly picked Cambodia as the "market under consideration" and appropriately excluded imports from nonmarket economy and export-subsidizing countries from the datasets it used when calculating input cost of production and market price. Katzmann also upheld Commerce's averaging of financial statements from Indian mattress-maker Emriates Sleep Systems and Grand Twins International (Cambodia) "for calculating constructed value profit and selling expenses."