The Commerce Department effectively locked out Siemens Energy's Spanish subsidiary, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, from an antidumping duty investigation on utility scale wind towers from Spain, the exporter argued in an Aug. 18 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Having applied adverse facts available and denied all exporters the right to be individually examined, Commerce failed to live up to its statutory obligations, SGRE said (Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy v. United States, CIT #21-00449).
Washington state-based importer Keirton USA filed a complaint in the Court of International Trade on Aug. 19 after the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington found that the trade court was the case's proper jurisdictional home. Keirton, a self-described importer of "agricultural equipment used to process cannabis and other farm goods, including hemp and kale" is challenging CBP's deemed exclusions of shipments of such machinery as "drug paraphernalia" (Keirton USA, Inc. v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CIT #21-00452).
The Commerce Department found that the Rediscount Loan Program offered to Kenertec Power System is an export subsidy and thus excluded from Kenertec's upstream subsidy calculation in a countervailing duty investigation on utility scale wind towers from Indonesia, it said in Aug. 19 remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade. Bringing the results of the review in line with CIT's decision in the matter, Commerce dropped the loan program from the CV rate it calculated in the investigation, resulting in a de minimis CVD rate for Kenertec (PT. Kenertec Power System & Wind Tower Trade Coalition v. U.S., CIT #21-03687).
The Commerce Department properly held that three companies owned by the same, although estranged, family are not affiliated for purposes of collapsing the entities in an antidumping case, the Court of International Trade said in an Aug. 20 opinion. The agency's contention that the companies did not clear any of the three standards for collapsing multiple companies for purposes of calculating a dumping margin was proper, Judge Gary Katzmann ruled.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with the Court of International Trade's rejection of CBP regulations that limit the amount of drawback that can be claimed on excise taxes, the CAFC said in a ruling. "We conclude that the expansive definition in the Rule, which extends drawback to situations in which tax is never paid or determined, conflicts with the unambiguous text of the statute," said the CAFC.
There’s been a steady recent uptick in the volume of Section 301 complaints at the Court of International Trade, but lawyers with active cases told us they're not sure if that has anything to do with the two-year anniversary of the Federal Register notice on Aug. 20, 2019, that put the List 4A tariffs into effect on Sept. 1, 2019, on goods from China. All the roughly 3,800 complaints inundating the court, and counting, seek to vacate the lists 3 and 4A tariffs and get the paid tariffs refunded on grounds that the duties are unlawful under the 1974 Trade Act and violate 1930 Administrative Procedure Act protections against sloppy rulemakings.
The Court of International Trade stayed proceedings in Stanley Black & Decker's case challenging the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff expansion to include steel "derivative" products pending the PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S. case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In back-to-back orders on Aug. 18, the court also issued a preliminary injunction against Stanley's entries subject to the steel derivatives tariffs (Stanley Black & Decker v. U.S., CIT #21-00262). Seeing as the PrimeSource case is the case on the forefront of the Section 232 steel derivatives tariff question, resolution of Stanley's case will wait until its appeal is settled. "The ultimate resolution of the PrimeSource case will likely resolve this matter without the necessity of going to trial, or, alternatively, it may narrow the issues in dispute," Stanley's motion for the stay said (see 2108030067).
OtterBox's victory in a Court of International Trade case setting a lower duty rate in a customs challenge on smartphone covers cannot be extended to a prior disclosure made by OtterBox, CIT said in an Aug. 18 opinion. Judge Claire Kelly ruled that the court did not have the jurisdiction to make the determination that entries not part of the Summons of the case should be reliquidated.
A Commerce Department regulation establishing expedited reviews for countervailing duty investigations was vacated in an Aug. 18 opinion from the Court of International Trade. Chief Judge Mark Barnett penned his fourth opinion in the case, upholding Commerce's finding that it couldn't find any alternative statutory basis on which to find that the regulation can exist.
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping duty case over the question of whether to "collapse" affiliate entities since they were owned by members of the "same, albeit estranged, family." In an Aug. 20 opinion, Judge Gary Katzmann held that Commerce properly reversed its original determination that the three companies were affiliated, since they did not clear the three requirements for collapsing given entities. In doing so, Commerce dropped its application of adverse facts available and gave Echjay Forgings Private Limited a 4.58% dumping margin.