The Court of International Trade on April 22 remanded parts of the Commerce Department's 2015 expedited review of the countervailing duty order on softwood lumber products from Canada. Judge Mark Barnett sent back the agency's decision not to account for subsidies received by lumber suppliers to the CVD respondents and its decision to use exporter Fontaine's 2014 fiscal year tax returns to conduct benefit calculations for the 2015 review period. Barnett sustained Commerce's instructions to CBP to liquidate entries from companies that received de minimis rates without regard to CV duties, along with the agency's finding that Canadian and Quebecois logging tax credits were countervailable benefits.
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. on April 17 filed for partial reconsideration of a Court of International Trade judgment that held the government waited too long to make a demand for payment under a customs bond, violating an "implied contractual term." The government said that it couldn't have "anticipated raising or discussing the issue" of an "implied contractual term of a reasonable time for demand," so it seeks to "do so here" (United States v. Aegis Security Insurance Co., CIT # 20-03628).
The Court of International Trade on April 19 remanded the Commerce Department's results in the 2019-20 review of the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves sent back the agency's pick of Brazil as a surrogate country, along with the use of Brazilian and Malaysian surrogate data, because it failed to cite evidence on the record to support the choice. The court also remanded Commerce's decision to adjust the Brazilian plywood dataset by removing Spanish import data.
The Court of International Trade sent back the Commerce Department's finding that exporter East Sea Seafoods Joint Stock Co. qualified for a separate antidumping duty rate in the 2019-20 review of the AD order on catfish from Vietnam, remarking that the agency failed to "show its work." Judge M. Miller Baker additionally remanded Commerce's methodology for calculating exporter Green Farms' AD rate and selection of India over Indonesia as the primary surrogate nation for setting the rate for exporter NTSF Seafoods Joint Stock Company.
The Court of International Trade on April 19 remanded the International Trade Commission's affirmative injury finding on oil country tubular goods from Argentina, Mexico, Russia and South Korea. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said it was "unreasonable" for the ITC to view the conditions of competition over a 42-month review period without considering the effects of competition at the end of the period and on the day that it voted, particularly in light of the effect of U.S. sanctions on Russia, imposed over the last four months of the review period. The judge also cited as reasons for the remand the commission's failure to consider contrary evidence of the effects of sanctions on Russian OCTG and the ITC's inclusion of non-subject South Korean imports in its analysis. She upheld the commission's decision to cumulate imports from Argentina and Mexico with goods from Russia and South Korea.
Importer Blue Sky the Color of Imagination will appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last week's Court of International Trade decision regarding the classification of the company's notebooks with calendars (see 2404100052), the notice of appeal said. In its decision, the trade court classified the goods under its own preferred Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading, 4820.10.20.10, rather than one of the subheadings advanced by Blue Sky or CBP. The judge said the court should prefer readings of the HTS that establish "conformity" across both the English and French translations of the Harmonized System, where it was used to set the HTS (Blue Sky the Color of Imagination v. U.S., CIT # 21-00624).
The U.S. voluntarily dismissed its customs penalty appeal brought against surety firm American Home Assurance Co., according to an April 17 joint stipulation of voluntarily dismissal filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (United States v. American Home Assurance Co., Fed. Cir. # 24-1069).
Parties in a customs case on the classification of human interface controllers will tell the Court of International Trade by May 20 if they will proceed with the case under "summary judgment motions or request for a trial," Judge Timothy Stanceu said in an April 16 order, noting that a status conference won't be held April 19 as originally planned. Importer Robert Bosch brought suit in 2020 to contest CBP's classification of the controllers under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 8473.70.9900, dutiable at 2.6% (see 2303090055) (Robert Bosch v. U.S., CIT # 20-00028).
The Commerce Department on April 16 once again found, on remand, that the South Korean government’s cap-and-trade carbon emissions program was de jure specific to one of the program’s users, a steel exporter (Hyundai Steel Co. v. U.S., CIT #22-00029).