Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Plaintiffs in an antidumping case failed to exhaust their administrative remedies when challenging the Commerce Department's decision to issue a questionnaire in lieu of on-site verification due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, the Court of International Trade ruled in a June 14 opinion. Judge Stephen Vaden said that the AD petitioner, Ellwood City Forge Co., had "multiple opportunities" to counter the verification methodology, but failed to do so administratively.
The Court of International Trade in a June 15 opinion sustained parts and sent back parts of the Commerce Department's remand results over the antidumping duty review of circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea. In the case's most recent remand, Commerce dropped a particular market situation adjustment to the cost of production for mandatory respondent Hyundai Steel but kept the adjustment to the other mandatory respondent Husteel's normal value when calculating non-examined respondent SeAH Steel's rate. In the opinion, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves sustained the PMS adjustment drop for Hyundai but remanded the PMS adjustment as it pertains to SeAH's rate.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a June 15 opinion affirmed the Court of International Trade's ruling in an anti-circumvention inquiry on hardwood plywood from China. The trade court sustained the Commerce Department's ruling that certain hardwood plywood was commercially available before Dec. 8, 2016, and did not constitute later-developed merchandise that circumvented the antidumping and countervailing duty orders. The appellate court ruled this decision was properly made and said the record reflects the availability of the merchandise before the orders.
The Commerce Department properly found that electricity was not provided below cost in South Korea in a countervailing duty investigation, the Court of International Trade said in a June 13 opinion. Following a remand from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said that both of the remanded issues -- Commerce's reliance on the preferential-rate standard and its failure to address the Korean Power Exchange's (KPX's) impact on the South Korean electricity market as rendering cost-recovery analysis -- now comply with the appellate court's ruling.
The Court of International Trade in a June 14 opinion sustained the Commerce Department's final determination in the antidumping duty investigation on forged steel fluid end blocks from Italy. The case was led by Ellwood City Forge Co., the AD petitioner, which argued against Commerce's use of a questionnaire in lieu of on-site verification due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Judge Stephen Vaden sided with the U.S., holding that the plaintiffs failed to exhaust administrative remedies on the verification question.
President Donald Trump's move to expand the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs onto "derivative" products was part of the president's original "plan of action," thus making the expansion legal, the U.S. argued in a June 10 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Centering the reply on a key Federal Circuit opinion, Transpacific Steel v. U.S., which said the president can carry out certain Section 232 tariff action beyond procedural deadlines, DOJ told the appellate court that the derivatives expansion sought to carry out the president's original goal of reaching an 80% domestic capacity utilization rate for steel and aluminum.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The government may only file counterclaims at the Court of International Trade in cases that involve imported merchandise, NetJets said in a June 8 motion seeking dismissal of a DOJ counterclaim seeking liquidated damages from the company for its failure to collect customs user fees (CUFs) for airline ticket purchases (NetJets Aviation, Inc. v. U.S., CIT #21-00142).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a June 10 order invited the U.S. to file an amicus brief in a case on whether the Commerce Department can conduct expedited countervailing duty reviews. The plaintiff-appellants, led by Fontaine Inc., filed their opening brief in February, seeking statutory cover for Commerce to perform the expedited reviews (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1021).