The Commerce Department on remand at the Court of International Trade deselected exporter Shandong Linglong Tyre as a mandatory respondent in the 2016-17 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China. The agency then granted Linglong separate rate status in the review, assigning the company a 41.36% AD rate (YC Rubber Co. (North America) v. United States, CIT Consol. # 19-00069).
Assemblies of stationary hydrogen fuel cell generators imported by HyAxiom are classifiable in heading 8405 as producer gas or water generators, not in heading 8479 as machines with functions not specified elsewhere or heading 8503 for parts of electric generators, said Court of International Trade Judge Timothy Stanceu in an Aug. 26 opinion. Finding in favor of the classification put forward by HyAxiom, formerly known as Doosan Fuel Cell America, Stanceu held that the HyAxiom’s “PC50 supermodule,” even though not a functioning machine as imported, has the essential character of a gas-generating machine of heading 8405.
The Court of International Trade on Aug. 26 vacated and remanded the National Marine Fisheries Service's comparability findings regarding New Zealand's "West coast, North Island multi-species set-net and trawl fisheries" in a suit from conservation group Maui and Hector's Dolphin Defenders NZ seeking an import ban on fish from these fisheries. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves held that NMFS' findings are "arbitrary and capricious" and that the agency's decision memorandum is a "cursory seven-page document that is replete with conclusory statements and cites minimal record evidence." However, the judge stopped short of ordering NMFS to implement an import ban, merely leaving this possibility on the table should the agency continue to issue an unsupported conclusion.
Court of International Trade Judge M. Miller Baker remanded Aug. 22 the Commerce Department’s decision to combine Belgian citric acid review respondent Citribel’s quarterly raw material costs with its annualized conversion costs.
The Court of International Trade sustained Aug. 22 the Commerce Department’s finding that a Vietnamese currency undervaluation program was specific to the traded goods sector, and thus countervailable in a countervailing duty investigation on passenger vehicle and light truck tires. The court said Commerce’s analysis was properly based on predominant use, distinguishing it from a disproportionality analysis.
In a confidential opinion released Aug. 22, Court of International Trade Judge Timothy Reif vacated the Commerce Department’s pause on antidumping and countervailing duties on solar cells from Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia -- in place until June 6, 2024 -- after a finding that the countries' exporters were circumventing an antidumping duty on solar cells from China (Auxin Solar v. United States, CIT # 23-00274).
The U.S. is using "magical thinking" as the basis for its defense in the case against the legality of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, said Rick Woldenberg, CEO of Hand2Mind and Learning Resources, the plaintiffs in the suit currently at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
In remand results released Aug. 15, the Commerce Department maintained its application of adverse facts available to Vietnamese exporters investigated in a solar cells circumvention inquiry (Trina Solar (Vietnam) Science & Technology Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00228).
In a reply brief, California said Aug. 18 that the U.S. had conceded the state’s challenge to President Donald Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs “arises out of” the IEEPA. The government’s following argument, that it also arises from Trump’s recent executive orders modifying the Harmonized Tariff Schedule to implement the tariffs, fails because those orders weren’t authorized by a “law of the United States,” it said (State of California v. Donald J. Trump, 9th Cir. # 25-3493).
The Court of International Trade dismissed Aug. 21 a case brought by Canadian lumber exporter J.D. Irving in an attempt to secure a lower antidumping duty cash deposit rate for some of its entries.