The U.S. Court of International Trade, per an order Aug. 18, scheduled a status conference in the Section 301 litigation for 10 a.m. on Sept. 1, two days before CBP is required to create a repository for importers to request liquidation suspensions of customs entries from China with lists 3 or 4A tariff exposure. The court has extended the deadline three times since ordering CBP to establish the repository in its July 6 preliminary injunction order (see 2108170049). The plaintiffs’ steering committee and the Department of Justice negotiated agreements on some previously contested terms for setting up the repository but are still far apart on others.
The Commerce Department will reconsider its application of the major input rule, treatment of certain general and administrative expenses and its use of adverse facts available in an antidumping duty case, according to two Aug. 18 Court of International Trade opinions. After remanding the case once before, Judge Leo Gordon remanded certain elements of the results yet again, but did sustain certain parts of Commerce's reconsideration, including its differential pricing analysis and adjustment of interest expenses to include a portion of the respondent's parent holding company's interest expense.
The Commerce Department reasonably rejected United Nations Comtrade and Eurostat data on natural gas imports from Russia when spurning the use of a tier-two benchmark for its less than adequate remuneration of a countervailing duty respondent's natural gas purchase prices, the Court of International Trade said. Further, Judge Gary Katzmann ruled that the agency properly denied the use of Eurostat natural gas import data from Norway, Algeria, Libya and Ukraine in a tier-three benchmark calculation, while reasonably selecting International Energy Agency (IEA) data for the benchmark.
The Court of International Trade created an “impermissible distinction” under customs valuation law between goods from non-market and market economies when it denied importer Meyer Corp. first sale valuation, the importer argued in an Aug. 9 opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Kicking off litigation in the much-anticipated appeal proceedings, Meyer argued against the alleged impermissibility of CIT's first sale rejection and for its qualifications for the special valuation status (Meyer Corporation, U.S. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1932).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department's remand results following an opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over an antidumping duty administrative review should be remanded yet again, mandatory respondent Bosun Tools Co. said in comments at the Court of International Trade. Commerce should have applied neutral facts available instead of adverse facts available when weighing Bosun's country of origin information using a first-in-first-out (FIFO) methodology, Bosun said. Even if this use of AFA is sustained, it should be limited to missing information and not applied to the U.S. sales prices for reported-FIFO sales, as Commerce did, Bosun suggested (Diamond Sawblades Manufacturers' Coalition v. United States, CIT #17-00167).
The Court of International Trade extended to Oct. 4 from Sept. 2 the preliminary injunction preventing the liquidation of unliquidated customs entries with Section 301 lists 3 or 4A tariff exposure, said an order signed late Aug. 16 by Judges Claire Kelly and Jennifer Choe-Groves. The judges also extended to Sept. 3 from Aug. 20 the deadline for CBP to create a repository for the subject customs entries. It’s the court's third deadline extension since Kelly and Choe-Groves ordered CBP to establish the repository in a July 6 preliminary injunction order.
The Court of International Trade vacated a Commerce Department regulation establishing expedited reviews for countervailing duty investigations in an Aug. 18 opinion. Chief Judge Mark Barnett, after issuing three other opinions in the case, upheld Commerce's finding that it couldn't find any alternative statutory basis on which to find that the regulation can exist. Barnett also nixed the expedited CVD reviews provided to some Canadian companies relating to the CVD order on certain softwood lumber from Canada. In doing so, Barnett ruled that companies deemed excluded from the CVD order due to the expedited reviews shall prospectively be reinstated as subject to it. Commerce shall also impose a cash deposit requirement based on the all-others rate from the investigation or the company-specific rate determined in the most recently completed administrative review in which the company was reviewed, Barnett said.
The U.S.' voluntary remand request in two Section 232 exclusion cases should be denied in its current form since the government's delayed, tranched solution is "unconscionable," steel importers Allegheny Technologies Inc. and California Steel Industries argued in an Aug. 16 reply brief. Given that Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests are supposed to be decided within 106 days, the Commerce Department's proposed nine to 12 month schedule to reconsider CSI's exclusion requests is "unreasonable" with a "nonsensical" rationale, CSI argued (Allegheny Technologies Incorporated et al. v. U.S., CIT #20-03923)(California Steel Industries, Inc. v. U.S., CIT #21-00015).
The Court of International Trade sustained in part and remanded in part the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping investigation into carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from Germany in two opinions. Judge Leo Gordon again remanded Commerce's application of the major input rule, treatment of certain general and administrative expenses and the application of adverse facts available. The judge did, however, sustain Commerce's differential pricing analysis and adjustment of interest expense to include a portion of respondent AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke's parent holding company's interest expense.