The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on June 30 issued its mandate in an appeal related to the 2019-20 review of the antidumping duty order on activated carbon from China. The court issued its decision in the case concurrently with a decision on the 2018-19 review of the same order, though appellants in the 2018-19 review case recently filed a motion for reconsideration regarding alleged legal errors committed by the court during its review (see 2506250040). No such motion for reconsideration was filed in the appeal on the 2019-20 review, which concerned respondent Carbon Activated Tianjin's challenge to the Commerce Department's use of Malaysian import data under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 4402.90.1000, which covers coconut-shell charcoal, as the surrogate value for coal-based carbonized material, an input of activated carbon, among other issues (see 2505090048) (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2413).
Respondent Carbon Activated Tianjin asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on June 23 to rehear its antidumping duty case, arguing that a three-judge panel committed "legal error" by affirming the Commerce Department's selection of the surrogate value for carbonized material. Carbon Activated said the panel also erred in "misapprehending key distinctions between the administrative record" of the 2018-19 AD review on Chinese activated carbon and the records of prior reviews (Carbon Activated Tianjin v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2135).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on June 3 sharply questioned counsel for exporter Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. in its case alleging that the Commerce Department doesn't have the adequate legal authority for its non-market economy policy in antidumping duty cases, which includes a rebuttable presumption that an exporter is controlled by the NME nation (Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2245).
The Court of International Trade upheld May 16 the Commerce Department’s affirmative circumvention finding for solar cells from Cambodia, saying again -- as it did in a concurrent case -- (see 2505160045) that Commerce’s reliance on one country-of-origin factor, level of research and development investment, was reasonable.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sustained both the Commerce Department's 2018-19 and 2019-20 reviews of the antidumping duty order on activated carbon from China in a pair of decisions. Judges Richard Taranto, Alvin Schall and Raymond Chen upheld Commerce's surrogate value picks in both reviews.
On remand, the Commerce Department again chose to directly value xanthan gum exporter Neimenggu Fufeng Biotechnologies’ energy costs for an antidumping duty review. It explained that for the first time in its reviews of the relevant AD order, it was able to break out a surrogate’s costs in a way that let it directly value Fufeng’s energy without fear of double-counting (Neimenggu Fufeng Biotechnologies Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00068).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on May 9 issued a pair of decisions sustaining the Commerce Department's 2018-19 and 2019-20 reviews of the antidumping duty order on activated carbon from China. In the 2018-19 review, Judges Richard Taranto, Alvin Schall and Raymond Chen upheld Commerce's surrogate value pick for coal-based carbonized material, an input of activated carbon. In the 2019-20 review, the judges upheld the agency's pick of Malaysia as the primary surrogate country and the surrogate value selections for carbonized material, coal tar, hydrochloric acid, steam and ocean freight.
U.S. activated carbon producers Calgon Carbon Corporation and Norit Americas brought a complaint to the Court of International Trade on Feb. 21 claiming that the Commerce Department wrongly accepted an antidumping duty order administrative review mandatory respondent’s allegation of a ministerial error. The allegation actually concerned “a methodological issue, not a ministerial issue,” they said (Calgon Carbon Corporation v. United States, CIT # 25-00028).
For the third time, the Court of International Trade remanded part of the Commerce Department’s final results of an antidumping duty review on multilayered wood flooring from China.
Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves again remanded the results of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty review of Chinese-origin multilayered wood flooring. Choe-Groves questioned whether the department’s decisions during the review were “results-driven or cherry-picking” because the department, instead of reopening the record to correct erroneous surrogate value information, still insisted on simply removing a month of bad data -- resulting in a surrogate value inflation of 453% (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00190).