The Commerce Department properly found that Shelter Forest International Acquisition's hardwood plywood exports were not later-developed merchandise and therefore did not circumvent the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood from China, the Court of International Trade said in a July 21 opinion. After initially finding that Shelter Forest's plywood exports were circumventing the orders, Commerce flipped its determination after an initial CIT remand.
Court of International Trade activity
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department resubmitted remand results on July 16, fixing clerical errors in the dumping margins for non-individually examined respondents in an antidumping review on certain oil country tubular goods from South Korea. After initially fixing clerical errors in a resubmission of the remand results, which stemmed from an April Court of International Trade decision, the July 16 filing marks the second time that Commerce has had to amend errors in its dumping margin calculation. The recalculated rates have now changed from 16.73% to 5.28% for SeAH Steel Corp., from 32.24% to 9.77% for Nexteel Co., and from 24.49% to 7.53% for the non-examined companies. The remand results also reversed Commerce's initial finding of a particular market situation in the South Korean steel market (see 2107010048) (SeAH Steel Co. v. United States, CIT #19-00086).
The Court of International Trade on July 20 granted a request for voluntary remand from the Commerce Department to reconsider two denied requests from Maple Leaf Marketing for exclusions from Section 232 tariffs. In its motion requesting the remand, Commerce said that the redo was appropriate given the similarities between Maple Leaf's situation and a 2020 case in front of CIT, JSW Steel Inc. v. U.S. In that case, the court found that Commerce's exclusion denials were "devoid of explanation and frustrate judicial review." In its request in the Maple Leaf case, Commerce said that it "could grant one or both of the exclusion requests that Maple Leaf challenges in this case." Commerce originally rejected the exclusions since it found that the "domestic industry was capable of manufacturing sufficient quantities of merchandise of sufficient quality" (Maple Leaf Marketing, Inc. v. U.S., CIT #20-00125).
The Commerce Department violated the Administrative Procedure Act by using the same "boilerplate language" used in every Section 232 exclusion request denial when axing CPW America Co.'s bid for relief from the national security tariffs, the company said in a July 19 complaint. By filing suit in the Court of International Trade, CPWA becomes yet another steel importer to challenge what it deems the unlawful denial of a request for exclusion from the Section 232 tariffs. The importer says that Commerce erred in issuing the denial by failing to "meaningfully consider" the evidence submitted by CPWA and find that there were no overriding national security considerations in granting the exclusion request (CPW America Co. v. United States, CIT #21-00335).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on July 20 backed the Commerce Department's initial decision to adjust a Turkish pipe exporter's post-sale price by only one-third of a late delivery penalty, saying it was supported by substantial evidence. Reversing a ruling from the Court of International Trade, the appellate court held that CIT erred in backing Commerce into adjusting the post-sale price by the entirety of the penalty cost since the customer was not aware of the methodology by which the amount of the penalty was to be determined. The decision brought the antidumping margin for mandatory respondent Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Vicaret's above de minimis to 5.11%.
The Court of International Trade denied a Vietnamese fish exporter's bid to obtain a separate antidumping rate from the country-wide rate in a July 6 opinion made public on July 21, finding the exporter failed to rebut the presumption of de facto government control. In the 15th administrative review of the antidumping order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam, the Commerce Department had denied I.D.I. International Development and Investment Corporation's application for a separate AD rate. The agency had said that the company didn't have autonomy from the government in making its management selection decisions, as evidenced by a government employee on its corporate board.
All customs entries from China with Section 301 lists 3 and 4A tariff exposure not yet liquidated as of the U.S. Court of International Trade's July 6 preliminary injunction (PI) order freezing liquidations would liquidate "in the ordinary course" and be refunded to the plaintiff importers at the end of the litigation if they win, Akin Gump lawyers proposed July 20 for sample case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products. Akin Gump seized on the proposal after DOJ lawyers at a status conference July 15 opened the door a crack to the possibility they would support a refund stipulation after months of refusing to do so.
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's negative antidumping and countervailing duty circumvention rulings on certain hardwood plywood products from China in a July 21 opinion, finding that Shelter Forest International Acquisition's goods were not later-developed merchandise. Commerce had reversed its initial finding of circumvention on remand after a previous CIT ruling in the case. The Coalition for Fair Trade in Hardwood Plywood challenged Commerce's findings, claiming that since a component of the glue was a trade secret, it could not be considered commercially available, making it later-developed. The court disagreed, ruling that whether the trade secret status of one part is irrelevant as to whether the plywood was actually “present in the market.”
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade: