Plaintiffs in a conflict-of-interest suit against the Commerce Department at the Court of International Trade, led by Amsted Rail Co., amended their complaint after a similar case of theirs against the International Trade Commission was dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The amended complaint added a specific alleged instance in which ARC gave its former counsel, Daniel Pickard, now of Buchanan Ingersoll, information that is now being used against it in antidumping and countervailing duty proceedings (Amsted Rail Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00316).
CBP in a Nov. 21 remand submission to the Court of International Trade continued to find that MSeafood Corporation did not evade antidumping duties by transshipping Indian shrimp through Vietnam. The agency said it believes it complied with the trade court's remand order by having CBP's Trade Remedy & Law Enforcement Directorate transmit all documents that were "inadvertently omitted" from the record to the agency's Office of Regulations and Rulings, and placing a revised public version of business confidential information (BC) on the record (Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Enforcement Committee v. United States, CIT #21-00129).
The Court of International Trade in a Nov. 23 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's decision to drop its particular market situation adjustment to two antidumping respondent's cost of production for the sales-below-cost test. Judge Gary Katzmann cited a recent Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision, Hyundai Steel Co. v. U.S., which made such an adjustment illegal.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Nov. 21 order denied customs broker test taker Byungmin Chae's motion for an oral argument in his case seeking credit on a select number of test questions. The court said that the appeal will be submitted on their briefs without oral argument (Byungmin Chae v. Janet Yellen, Fed. Cir. #22-2017).
The Commerce Department did not "sufficiently" identify withheld information to justify of its use of adverse facts available in an antidumping duty case, plaintiff Kumar Industries argued in a Nov. 18 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Commerce failed to identify "a single document that was actually missing" to justify the use of AFA and also chose not to verify the information submitted by Kumar despite ample opportunity to do so, the brief said (Kumar Industries v. United States, CIT #21-00622).
Plaintiffs in a conflict-of-interest suit asked the Court of International Trade for an injunction barring attorney Daniel Pickard and his firm Buchanan Ingersoll from participating in a set of antidumping and countervailing duty investigations before the International Trade Commission. Filing a motion for injunction pending appeal after the trade court dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds, the plaintiffs, led by Amsted Rail Co., argued that they're likely to succeed on appeal since, at the very least, they raised serious legal questions, warranting a stay order from the court. The plaintiffs also claimed that the court erred by illegally shifting the burden to the plaintiffs to identify specific times ARC shared confidential information with Pickard and Buchanan (Amsted Rail Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00307).
Two Commerce Department redeterminations excluding certain ductile iron flanges from the scope of a 2003 antidumping duty order were found unsatisfactory by the Court of International Trade, since they "are not in a form in which the court could sustain" them, according to two Nov. 18 orders by Judge Timothy Stanceu. Since Commerce said on remand that it will issue a revised scope ruling if the remand submissions are affirmed, the agency is looking for approval of a decision that is not a scope determination but "instead is preliminary to such a decision." As a result, the decision "could not be put into effect should it be sustained," and Commerce would "escape direct judicial review," the judge said.
No lawsuits have been filed at the Court of International Trade since Nov. 16.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will hold an oral argument on Jan. 10, 2023, at 10 a.m. EST in a case on whether President Donald Trump illegally expanded Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs to include derivative products. According to the notice of oral argument, the court will hold the hearing in Courtroom 201 in the Howard T. Markey National Courts Building in Washington. In the case, the Court of International Trade said that Trump illegally expanded the tariffs to derivative products beyond the 105-day deadline to take tariff action that runs from the submission of a report from the commerce secretary. In Transpacific Steel v. U.S., however, the Federal Circuit said that Trump could take certain tariff actions beyond this deadline so long as it it was part of the original "plan of action" (see 2107130059) (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 21-2066).
The Commerce Department in Nov. 17 remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade further explained its surrogate value selection for coal-based carbonized materials and Malaysian company Bravo Green's 2018 financial statements to calculate the surrogate financial ratios in an antidumping duty case (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. v. United States, CIT #21-00131).