Importer and U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese manufacturing company, Wanxiang America Corp. is guilty of negligence by making false statements and omissions over its entries of wheel hub assemblies, radial ball and tapered roller bearings, and universal joints and their parts, the U.S. argued in a July 13 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Through its negligence, Wanxiang America avoided antidumping duties and customs duties on its entries, cheating the U.S. out of over $31 million in lost revenue, the U.S. said. DOJ filed its case to seek the lost duty payments along with a penalty (United States v. Wanxiang America Corporation, CIT #22-00205).
The Court of International Trade in a July 14 opinion said that the Commerce Department properly rejected countervailing duty respondent Tau-Ken Temir's questionnaire response as being untimely because it was filed an hour and 41 minutes late. In the CVD investigation on silicon metal from Kazakhstan, counsel for TKT was experiencing computer problems and submitted an extension request an hour and 10 minutes before the filing deadline. Gordon upheld Commerce's rejection of this request, holding that it is not clear why the plaintiffs didn't file an extension earlier and that the respondent didn't put forth a maximum effort to give Commerce the requested information by the deadline.
The Court of International Trade issued a pair of opinions on July 15. In one, Judge Timothy Stanceu sent back the Commerce Department's final results in the administrative review of the antidumping duty order on welded steel pipe products from the United Arab Emirates. Stanceu ruled that Commerce's decision to deny plaintiffs, led by Universal Tube and Plastic Industries, a level-of-trade adjustment was based on unsatisfactory analysis "when viewed according to the statutory criteria and the record evidence on the whole."
President Donald Trump's move to revoke an exclusion to Section 201 safeguard measures on bifacial solar panels was "particularly pernicious," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Clean Power Association argued in a July 12 amicus brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The amici said that safeguard measures should be applied in a way that's "predictable, circumscribed, and allows for reasonable business planning," and that Trump's move violated these principles. Revoking the exception injected uncertainty into government-imposed safeguard measures, which will have a ripple effect in the economy, potentially making inflation and supply chain crises worse, they said (Solar Energy Industries Association v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1392).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Plaintiffs Garg Tube Export and Garg Tube Limited signed off on the Commerce Department's reversal of its finding that a particular market situation existed in India related to the price of hot-rolled coil in an antidumping duty review (see 2206090067). Submitting comments on Commerce's remand results at the Court of International Trade, Garg said that it "fully supports" the finding that no PMS existed. The result, if sustained, would be a decrease in Garg's margin to zero percent. The case concerns the 2017-18 administrative review of the AD duty order on welded carbon steel standard pipes and tubes from India. In the second court opinion in the case, the trade court ruled that Commerce failed to show how certain market phenomena gave rise to a unique set of facts distorting the cost of materials or other processing such that Garg's cost of production isn't within the normal course of trade (see 2203230018) (Garg Tube Export and Garg Tube Limited v. United States, CIT #20-00026).
The Department of Commerce correctly used its knowledge test to exclude from the final margin calculation sales made to JA Solar, argued the government in a July 8 brief at the Court of International Trade opposing a summary judgment by JA Solar (JA Solar International Limited v. U.S., CIT #21-00514).
Florida-based importer Siboney Corporation violated the law by fraudulently avoiding paying Federal Excise Tax (FET) on 32 entries of large cigars, the U.S. argued in a July 12 complaint at the Court of International Trade. DOJ alleged that Siboney improperly calculated its amount of FET owed on the entries based on the sales price from the Nicaraguan exporter plus a 5% markup to a "fictitious" company, Blue Mountain Cigars, and an affiliated wholesaler, GAMATTSA (United States v. Siboney Corporation, CIT #22-00204).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Plaintiffs in a countervailing duty case, except Taizhou United Imp. & Exp., are appealing a Court of International Trade ruling that the Commerce Department properly found that the Chinese government and CVD respondent Jangho Group failed to respond to the best of their ability over whether certain aluminum extrusion suppliers are "authorities." The plaintiffs are taking the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. At CIT, Judge Leo Gordon ruled that Commerce appropriately applied adverse facts available in the 2013 administrative review of the CVD order on aluminum extrusions from China (see 2205100076). The plaintiffs challenged Commerce's position that the provision of glass and aluminum extrusions for less than adequate remuneration was specific on an industry basis. Gordon said the plaintiffs pointed out a wide variety of uses for glass but didn't engage with Commerce's analysis of the record finding the recipients of government authority-provided glass are limited in number to at least two and possibly four industries (Taizhou United Imp. & Exp. Co. v. U.S., CIT Consol. #16-00009).