The case against United States Steel Corporation alleging that the Pittsburgh-based company misled the Commerce Department when it objected to Russian importer NLMK's Section 232 exclusion argues an unrecognized category of "unfair competition," U.S. Steel said in an Aug. 30 motion to toss the case. In a brief filed in the lawsuit at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, U.S. Steel said that it is immune to any liability stemming from its petitioning of the government and that NLMK's suit is barred by federal law (NLMK Pennsylvania, LLC, et al. v. United States Steel Corporation, W.D. Pa. #21-00273).

The Commerce Department should have picked Indonesia over India when selecting a surrogate country in an antidumping duty administrative review on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam, Catfish Farmers of America said in an Aug. 30 complaint filed at the Court of International Trade. Commerce picked India in spite of the fact that Indonesia "produces identical and comparable merchandise that more closely represents the subject merchandise than does India, Indonesia produces and exports far greater quantities than India, and the Indonesian data on the record are superior to the Indian data," the complaint said (Catfish Farmers of Ameirca, et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00380).

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

After talks with the Commerce Department broke down over when Hong Kong-based apparel company Changji Esquel Textile (CJE) could be dropped from the agency's entity list, CJE resumed its litigation against the designation in federal court. The company, part of the Esquel group, on Aug. 27 filed a motion to re-set a hearing on a preliminary injunction against its placement on the list.

The Commerce Department's arguments to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that say that pencil importer Prime Time Commerce failed to exhaust its administrative remedies in an antidumping duty review mistake the agency's regulatory requirements, Prime Time said in an Aug. 26 reply brief. Having already requested certain "gap-filling" information that only Commerce could provide five other times in the review, Prime Time did not need to request a sixth time to have argued for a separate rate in the review, the brief said.

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The Commerce Department has to reconsider two scope rulings that found that certain flanges are subject to the antidumping duty order on cast iron pipe fittings from China. In two decisions, the Court of International Trade said that Commerce either misinterpreted evidence or failed to consider all the relevant evidence when deciding that flanges from MCC Holdings, doing business as Crane Resistoflex, and Star Pipe Products are subject to the antidumping duty order.

The Court of International Trade remanded an antidumping case to the Commerce Department after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the trade court's initial ruling in an Aug. 26 order. The Federal Circuit had on July 20 backed Commerce's initial decision to adjust a Turkish pipe exporter's post-sale price by only one-third of a late delivery penalty, finding that the adjustment was supported by substantial evidence (see 2107200038). CIT erred in leading Commerce to adjust the post-sale price by the entirety of the penalty cost since the customer was not aware of the methodology by which the amount of the penalty was to be determined. Commerce has 45 days to file the remand, and any objections can be filed 20 days after the redetermination submission (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #19-00056).

The Court of International Trade granted partial judgment in an antidumping case on Aug. 26, holding that the Commerce Department legally included sample sales of quartz surface products from Pokarna Engineered Stone Limited in the dumping calculation. Judge Leo Gordon originally made the call on Aug. 25, but issued Friday's decision of partial judgment to finalize the decision, seeing as there are other lingering issues still being litigated in the case.

The U.S. case against Oregon-based hemp distributor We CBD is already proven since the company admitted to the wrongdoing in another case in the same court, the Department of Justice said in an Aug. 26 motion for judgment at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. When We CBD admitted to the export violations alleged by DOJ in its negligence case against Planet Nine Private Air over a charter plane service used to ship hemp, it effectively declared that CBP was right to confiscate the shipment, the motion said (United States v. Approximately 548.22 Pounds of Hemp Detained From We CBD LLC, on November 8, 2020 at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, W.D.N.C. #21-00267).