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).
A domestic steel trade group brought a complaint to the Court of International Trade Feb. 7 alleging that a mandatory respondent in a tire antidumping duty review “was attempting to pass off [a non-market economy] entity as a market-economy entity” and should have been hit with adverse facts available (United Steel, Paper and Forestry International Union v. United States, CIT # 25-00004).
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit judges didn’t ask much as, on Feb. 3, Chinese exporters led by Carbon Activated Tianjin faced off against petitioners and the United States regarding the results of two administrative antidumping duty reviews on its activate carbon products. The exporters argued, among other things, that the Commerce Department used too narrow a category of product when selecting a surrogate value for the prices of an input (Carbon Activated v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2135, 23-2413).
The Commerce Department erred in picking Malaysia as the main surrogate country in the 2022-23 review of the antidumping duty order on activated carbon from China, exporter Carbon Activated Corp. argued in a Jan. 27 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Carbon Activated said that Romania was the better choice and that Commerce's use of Malaysia surrogate values for coal tar, sub-bituminous coal, hydrochloric acid, solid sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide was unsupported by substantial evidence (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00265).