The Court of International Trade granted an indefinite injunction against the liquidation of Moroccan exporter OCP S.A.'s phosphate fertilizers in an Oct. 4 order. The key issue before the court over the injunction was its length. The U.S., while agreeing to the injunction in principle, thought the injunction should only run to the end of the first administrative review of the countervailing duty order on the fertilizers -- a review that had yet to commence. OCP pushed for an indefinite injunction against liquidation. The court sided with OCP, finding that the exporter has sufficiently showed that it will suffer irreparable harm if the court enters an injunction that doesn't extend to entries affected by this litigation and occurring after the end of the 2021 calendar year -- the date at which automatic liquidation would begin.
The Commerce Department has not shown good cause to delay filing its remand results in an antidumping case by 21 days, Turkish steel exporter and plaintiff Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret argued in an Oct. 1 brief at the Court of International Trade. While sympathetic to the agency's rationale of a large case load necessitating the extra time, the excuse falls flat since these conditions are not unusual or extraordinary circumstances, Borusan argued. Commerce also failed to show that these issues were unanticipated, the brief said (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #19-00056).
The Court of International Trade granted the Commerce Department's request for a voluntary remand in a case over an error the agency made in its liquidation instructions following an antidumping review. Chief Judge Mark Barnett gave the court until Oct. 15 to submit the results of its redetermination (Optima Steel International, LLC, et al. v. U.S., CIT #21-00327).
The Court of International Trade denied importer GLB Energy Corporation's preliminary injunction motion to revert its liquidated xanthan gum entries to unliquidated status, in a Sept. 30 order. Judge Gary Katzmann sided with the U.S.'s opposition to the injunction motion, finding that the court does not have jurisdiction to review entries that have already been liquidated. The obvious exception is if the case is a challenge to a denied CBP protest over a liquidated entry, which GLB has not filed. “Moreover, as the Government correctly observes, there is another avenue for GLB to preserve its rights: it can timely file an action under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(a) contesting CBP’s denial of its protest,” Katzmann said (All One God Faith, Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT #20-00164).
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held in an Oct. 4 opinion that the Commerce Department properly applied adverse facts available to Hyundai Electric & Energy Systems in an antidumping review on large power transformers from South Korea. In the review, Hyundai said it shifted costs among LPT projects in the ordinary course of business to show that each project was profitable. Commerce requested information on this cost shifting from Hyundai, who broke down the cost differences by LPT project for reconciliation into six categories. Commerce deemed that Hyundai only gave sufficient information on one of these categories. The Court of International Trade had also found Commerce's resulting application of AFA to be appropriate.
The Commerce Department wants a voluntary remand to reconsider a bevy of blanket Section 232 exclusion denials it issued to Voestalpine High Performance Metals Corp. and Edro Specialty Steels, the agency told the Court of International Trade in a Sept. 30 filing (Voestalpine High Performance Metals Corp., et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00093). Judge Miller Baker then stayed the time for plaintiffs to respond to this remand motion “until further order of the court,” in an order. The judge then instructed all parties to let the court know their position on court-annexed mediation to settle the issue of remand.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade designated a tariff classification challenge on circuit card assemblies as a test case for four other lawsuits all brought by the same importer in a Sept. 30 order. Judge M. Miller Baker designated Triumph Engine Control System's case #19-00094 as the test case for the other cases -- CIT #19-00108, 19-00109, 19-00110 and 19-00130. Triumph believes the proper Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading for its assemblies is 9032, while CBP claims that 8538 is the proper subheading (see 2109170030) (Triumph Engine Control Systems, LLC v. United States, CIT #19-00094).
The Court of International Trade sustained the International Trade Commission's affirmative injury determination in the antidumping investigation of polyethylene terephtalate from Oman in a Sept. 30 confidential opinion. Judge Timothy Reif sent a letter to the litigants instructing them to look over the opinion with an eye out for confidential information, informing the court by Oct. 7 whether any further information should be redacted. A public opinion of the decision can be expected by Oct. 8. OCTAL Inc. brought the case, arguing that the ITC's conclusion of adverse volume and price effects was not backed by substantial evidence (OCTAL Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT #20-03698).
A conflict of interest allegation did not cause an antidumping duty investigation respondent to untimely file its questionnaire responses, the Commerce Department argued in a Sept. 27 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Responding to Tau-Ken Temir's brief explaining that this allegation was the reason for the delay in filing the responses, Commerce said that it did not abuse its discretion when it found that the petitioner did not interfere with TKT's ability to file the questionnaire responses (Tau-Ken Temir LLP et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00173).