The Department of Defense reversed its designation of exporter Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment as a “Chinese military company,” the exporter and the government said Feb. 6 in a motion for stipulated judgment (Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. China v. United States, D. D.C. # 24-2357).

The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Feb. 13 issued its mandate in an antidumping duty case after ruling that the Commerce Department must establish a "particularly strong need to deter noncompliance" when setting adverse facts available rates that drastically differ from accuracy margins (see 2501070084). The appellate court rejected a 154.33% AD rate for steel nail exporter Oman Fasteners, which was set after the company missed a filing deadline by 16 minutes. The appellate court said Commerce should only look to impose massive AFA rates based on a record of unreasonable negligence or international misconduct (Oman Fasteners v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1661).

The Commerce Department adequately determined an exporter’s single sale during a new shipper review’s period of review was bona fide, the U.S. said Feb. 12 (Catfish Farmers of America v. U.S., CIT # 24-00126).

The Court of International Trade said in a text-only order that it "intends to consolidate" the nine cases challenging the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on aluminum extrusions from China and the nine cases challenging the countervailing duty investigation on the same product if no party objects by Feb. 19. All cases were assigned to Judge Mark Barnett last week. The judge said he set the Feb. 19 date so that only one administrative record needed to be filed in the consolidated action.

The U.S. defended its designation of Chinese lidar company Hesai Technology as a "Chinese military company" in a Feb. 12 brief at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, responding to a host of arguments from Hesai claiming that the designation wasn't backed by substantial evidence and committed various legal errors (Hesai Technology Co. v. United States, D.D.C. # 24-01381).

The U.S. on Feb. 11 filed a motion to strike as misleading a chemical manufacturer’s recent citation of a CBP letter, saying it was “a decision from a separate proceeding, issued by a separate agency” that had been brought up without sufficient prior notice (Cambridge Isotope Laboratories v. United States, CIT # 23-00080).

Litigants in a lawsuit on a drawback claim told the Court of International Trade in a joint status report that they don't believe the case is "amenable to mediation," though they said they are discussing whether the suit can be settled through a "stipulated judgment on agreed statement of facts." The plaintiff, individual importer Timothy Brown, said he gave the U.S. a "proposed stipulated judgment," which the U.S. is reviewing (Timothy Brown v. United States, CIT # 20-03733).

Importers Struxtur and Evolutions Flooring dropped their appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on the Commerce Department's use of a country-wide adverse facts available rate in calculating the antidumping duty rate for the separate rate respondents in the 2016-17 administrative review of the AD order on multilayered wood flooring from China. The case will continue to be litigated by importers led by Galleher Corp., which filed their opening brief last week, arguing that the use of the AFA rate punishes the separate rate respondents for respondent Sino-maple's lack of cooperation and leads to an aberrational AD rate (see 2502050023). Counsel for Struxtur and Evolutions didn't respond to a request for comment (Fuson Jinlong Wooden Group Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 25-1196).

In response Feb. 10 to a steel labor union’s December motion for judgment (see 2412110059), the U.S. defended a Commerce Department scope ruling that temporary-use tires weren’t subject to antidumping duties on passenger vehicle and light truck tires from Taiwan, saying the union hadn’t exhausted its administrative remedies (United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union v. United States, CIT # 24-00165).