Court of International Trade Judge Stephen Vaden earlier this month said he is working on two decisions to be issued simultaneously in a case on the International Trade Commission's affirmative injury determination on phosphate fertilizers. In a text-only order, the judge said one opinion will deal with the merits of the appeal, while the other will address the court's issue with the commission's treatment of confidential information (OCP v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 21-00219).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit scheduled oral argument for the lead case on the Commerce Department's use of the Cohen's d test in its differential pricing analysis, for March 5 at 10 a.m. EST. The issue was previously remanded by the Federal Circuit for Commerce to explain its use of the d test despite not adhering to basic statistical assumptions, such as the normal distribution of data and roughly equal variances (see 2107150032). The agency said on remand that it didn't need to adhere to these assumptions, since it's using the entire population of data and not just a sample. The Court of International Trade upheld this explanation (see 2302270049) (Stupp Corp. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1663).
In a complaint before the Court of International Trade filed Jan. 20, two exporters alleged that the Commerce Department failed to correct multiple ministerial errors during an antidumping duty review on Chinese activated carbon (Ningxia Guanghua Cherishmet Activated Carbon Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00262).
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 21 sustained in part and remanded in part the Commerce Department's remand results in the expedited countervailing duty review on softwood lumber products from Canada, in a confidential decision. Judge Mark Barnett sent the review back for Commerce to "reconsider or further explain its subsidy calculations with respect to" the consolidated entity of D&G/Portbec. The court found for the government on the remaining issues (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 19-00122).
Responding to U.S. opposition to its summary judgment motion, importer Mitsubishi Power Americas said Jan. 17 that the government “proffered nothing to dispute” expert testimony that shows its products are neither filters nor purifiers and misunderstood the way they actually work (Mitsubishi Power Americas v. U.S., CIT #21-00573).
Chinese manufacturer Camel Group Co. took to the Court of International Trade last week to contest its placement on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Entity List, arguing that the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force "utterly disregarded, ignored and trampled" its due process rights in a "flawed and poorly executed process." The company said FLETF illicitly conducted the process in the shadows, refusing to offer it access to any of the evidence used against the company, and that the decision to deny its petition to be removed from the list wasn't backed by substantial evidence (Camel Group Co. v. United States, CIT # 25-00022).
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 22 largely dismissed importer Prysmian Cables and Systems USA's suit challenging the Commerce Department's denial of its Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests. Judge Stephen Vaden said the company's claims that Commerce failed to act since it didn't perform three required actions for each denial fall short, since the agency didn't fail to act. A denial isn't an "action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed: It is a decision," the court said. The court also dismissed most of Prysmian's challenges to the denials as being arbitrary and capricious, finding them to have been brought beyond the applicable two-year statute of limitations for challenging Section 232 exclusion request denials.
Regulatory attorney Brett Shumate left his position as partner at Jones Day on Jan. 17, the firm said in a notice to the Court of International Trade. Shumate had appeared as counsel for various companies in the massive Section 301 litigation before the trade court. Shumate joined Jones Day as a partner in 2019 after serving as the deputy assistant attorney general for the federal programs branch in DOJ's civil division.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade: