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

A Court of International Trade case over importer Greenlight Organic's alleged fraud in misclassifying its knit garments should be dropped since the statute of limitations ran out, Greenlight said in an Aug. 3 brief. After the court ruled in 2018 that the statute of limitations had some lingering questions, Greenlight said it has procured enough evidence for the court to now rule in its favor and that the U.S.'s fraud case is effectively time barred (United States v. Greenlight Organic, Inc. et al., CIT #17-00031).

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

The Commerce Department properly selected Mexico over Malaysia as the surrogate nation in an antidumping duty review, the Court of International Trade held in an Aug. 5 opinion. Ruling that Mexico served as a significant producer of identical merchandise and that the selection of the Mexican financial statements was backed by reasonable evidence, Judge Timothy Reif upheld Commerce's determination.

Shanxi Pioneer Hardware Industrial Co., a plaintiff in a Court of International Trade case over an antidumping administrative review on steel nails from China, will appeal the court's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, it said in an Aug. 4 notice of appeal. Judge Leo Gordon said the Commerce Department has a right to apply total adverse facts available for a mandatory respondent's failure to provide its factors of production data on a control number-specific basis in antidumping cases (see 2106090048). Shanxi was one of the three mandatory respondents for the administrative review and received a total AFA duty margin of 118.04% (Xi'An Metals Import & Export Co., Ltd. et al. v. United States, CIT #20-00103).

The Commerce Department permissibly relied on total adverse facts available in an antidumping case in light of the Court of International Trade's orders, the Department of Justice argued in July 30 final comments on Commerce's remand results. The respondent, Hung Vuong Group, attempted to submit new factual information in the case before the remand was filed, but no such authority exists for this submission to be accepted, DOJ said (Hung Vuong Corp., et al. v. United States, CIT #19-00055).

The Commerce Department unlawfully selected Malaysia as its surrogate country in an antidumping duty administrative review and the decision should be remanded by the Court of International Trade for reconsideration of selecting Romania instead, plaintiffs in a case challenging the review said in July 30 comments opposing the first remand results. Seeing as the remand itself recognizes the superiority of the Romanian data and acknowledges certain input data from Malaysia is aberrational, the court should hold that Commerce's reliance on Malaysia as the surrogate nation is unlawful, the plaintiffs said (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co., Ltd. et al. v. United States, CIT #20-00007).

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

The Commerce Department on Aug. 2 continued to find affiliation between the lone respondent in an antidumping duty investigation and one of its U.S. customers after voluntarily remanding the case to consider comments from the respondent. After clearing this procedural hurdle, Commerce maintained this determination in its remand results, accounting for the finding in the duty margin calculation using neutral facts available (OCTAL, Inc. et al. v. United States, CIT #20-03697).

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas properly struck down the crude oil export tax under 26 U.S.C. Section 4611(b) as unconstitutional, commodity trading and logistics house Trafigura Trading said in its July 30 brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. The tax on crude oil exports violates the U.S. Constitution's Export Clause banning any taxes on exports, the company said. As a result, the district court appropriately awarded Trafigura a $4.2 million refund for its taxes paid, the company said (Trafigura Trading LLC v. U.S., 5th Cir. #21-20127).