The Court of International Trade in a pair of nearly-identical decisions sustained the Commerce Department's scope ruling that certain trailer wheels made by Asia Wheel Co. fall within the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on steel trailer wheels from China. The wheels are made in Thailand using discs from China and rims made in Thailand. Judge Gary Katzmann held that Commerce didn't unlawfully expand the scope of the orders, since the agency said when it imposed the orders that wheels made of mixed-origin rims and discs could be subject to a scope ruling in the future. The judge also held that Commerce's finding that Asia Wheel's products weren't "substantially transformed" in Thailand was properly supported.
The Court of International Trade's Pay.gov system will be undergoing maintenance on Feb. 22 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. EST, the court announced. Documents requiring payment on Pay.gov can't be filed on CM/ECF during this time, the court said.
The International Trade Commission erred in failing to consider diesel fuel price increases when assessing whether imports of frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador, India, Indonesia and Vietnam harmed the U.S. industry, Ecuadorian respondents Industrial Pesquera Santa Priscila and Sociedad Nacional De Galapagos argued. Filing a complaint at the Court of International Trade on Feb. 18, the pair said the injury finding was unsupported by the record, due to the lack of information about fuel price increases (Industrial Pesquera Santa Priscila v. United States, CIT # 25-00029).
The inaugural use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs, which saw President Donald Trump set a 10% duty on all goods from China (see 2502030044), has sparked plenty of speculation as to how these tariffs could be challenged in court. One such argument is a statutory claim rooted in the text of IEEPA.
The Commerce Department continued to find on remand at the Court of International Trade that respondent Louis Dreyfus Co. Sucos S.A. and an unnamed supplier, dubbed "Supplier A," are not affiliated, nor are they partners. The agency said it's important to "distinguish 'exclusivity' from 'reliance'" in conducting affiliation analyses, noting that an exclusive relationship with a supplier doesn't mean a party isn't "perfectly capable of acting independently if the exclusive relationship is no longer in its interests" (Ventura Coastal v. United States, CIT # 23-00009).
The Commerce Department's finding that the Vietnamese traded-goods sector was the "predominant user" of the alleged undervaluation of the Vietnamese dong is not in line with the "statutory requirements," exporter Kumho Tire (Vietnam) Co. argued in a Feb. 14 brief at the Court of International Trade (Kumho Tire (Vietnam) Co. v. United States, CIT # 21-00397).
The Commerce Department properly excluded in-transit mattresses from the calculation of constructed export price (CEP) for respondent PT. Zinus Global Indonesia in the antidumping duty investigation on mattresses from Indonesia, the Court of International Trade held on Feb. 18. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves also sustained Commerce's exclusion of the selling expenses of Zinus Indonesia's parent company Zinus Korea from the normal value calculation.
For the third time, the Court of International Trade remanded part of the Commerce Department’s final results of an antidumping duty review on multilayered wood flooring from China.
An importer of 3D pen kits again said Feb. 14 that the U.S. hadn’t met the procedural requirements to shield unredacted internal CBP communication under the deliberative process privilege (Quantified Operations Limited v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 22-00178).
The U.S. said Feb. 7 that importer Mitsubishi’s catalyst blocks were actually filters, despite the importer’s arguments otherwise, and thus was properly classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 8421 and assessed Section 301 tariffs (Mitsubishi Power Americas v. United States, CIT # 21-00573).