LG Electronics, and its U.S. affiliate, launched a case at the Court of International Trade against the International Trade Commission for freezing out certain members of its counsel from a safeguard extension proceeding on solar panels, in a Sept. 16 complaint. The ITC did not grant full access to proprietary information for all of LGE's legal team, from the firm Curtis Mallet-Prevost, due to the lawyers' roles in representing China in a dispute settlement case at the World Trade Organization (LG Electronics USA, Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT 21-00520).
Court of International Trade activity
The Court of International Trade said the Commerce Department had sufficient evidence in its changed circumstances review that found that the situation had not changed regarding countervailable subsidies for Argentina's biodiesel industry. Judge Gary Katzmann, in a Sept. 21 opinion, also held that Commerce, which originally found changed circumstances but later switched back to a finding of no changed circumstances, acted in accordance with the law.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department's decision to grant byproduct offsets for an antidumping review respondent's fish oil and fish meal exports was backed by sufficient evidence, the Court of International Trade said in a Sept. 20 order. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves also ruled that Commerce's determination that the Global Trade Atlas' (GTA) data was the best available to calculate a surrogate value for the two byproducts was properly supported.
The Court of International Trade granted the Commerce Department's motion to lift a stay and voluntarily remand an antidumping duty case to give the agency a chance to consider new information showing inaccuracies in the mandatory respondent's reported sales prices, CIT said in a Sept. 20 order. The inaccuracies are based on potential fraud and Commerce has an interest in making sure the proceedings are free of fraud, the trade court said.
The Commerce Department rightly made the switch to neutral facts available from adverse facts available in an antidumping review, following a previous Court of International Trade decision that found Commerce failed to adequately give assistance to a small, first-time respondent, CIT said in a Sept. 20 decision.
The Court of International Trade rejected an importer's bid for reconsideration of its challenge of the countervailing duty rate assessed on its tire imports. The court found for the second time that the importer lacked proper jurisdiction due to an untimely filed protest of a liquidation decision. “The lesson is both clear and stark: Don’t sit on your rights,” Judge Stephen Alexander Vaden said.
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's final results in a changed circumstances review on Argentine biodiesel, finding that the situation hadn't changed regarding countervailable subsidies for Argentina's biodiesel industry. Commerce based the underlying CVD order on an export tax differential between Argentine biodiesel and soybeans. The Argentine government then petitioned for a CCR, arguing that the rates were now equal. In the preliminary results of the CCR, Commerce held that the tax differential had in fact changed, slashing the CVD rate for biodiesel. After new evidence was given to the agency, Commerce found the biodiesel subsidy situation to be in "flux," eventually maintaining the original CVD rate.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Importer Triumph Engine Control Systems filed a Sept. 16 consent motion at the Court of International Trade to designate a tariff classification challenge on circuit card assemblies as a test case for four other of its lawsuits. Triumph believes the proper Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading is 9032, while CBP says 8538 is the correct subheading for the assemblies. The other four cases -- CIT #19-00108, 19-00109, 19-00110 and 19-00130 -- deal with "merchandise and legal issues that are substantially identical," to those in the proposed test case, the motion said. The Justice Department consented to the test case motion (Triumph Engine Control Systems, LLC v. United States, CIT #19-00094).