The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. on March 25 supported the Commerce Department’s voluntary remand results that used an Italian steel exporter’s quarterly costs methodology to calculate its steel’s value and assigned the exporter a de minimis rate (Officine Tecnosider SRL v. U.S., CIT # 23-00001).
An Indian exporter of granular polytetrafluorethylene, the generic version of Teflon, said March 27 that the “minute” amount of wind energy produced by an affiliate was not “primarily directed” at its own own PTFE manufacturing because electricity from certain sources can't be earmarked for any particular process (Gujarat Fluorochemicals v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1268).
The Court of International Trade in a March 11 decision made public April 1 sent back the Commerce Department's use of a simple average of a zero percent and an adverse facts available antidumping rate to set the separate AD rate in the 2016-17 review of the order on multilayered wood flooring from China. Judge Richard Eaton said that because Commerce had Sino-Maple (Jiangsu) Co.'s aggregate U.S. sales information, the lack of transaction-specific U.S. sales data for the exporter didn't support departing from the expected method, which requires a weighted average of the zero and AFA rates.
The Court of International Trade on April 1 granted the New Zealand government's motion to dissolve a preliminary injunction banning its fish exports in a challenge to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2020 findings that New Zealand's standards for its West Coast North Island inshore trawl and set net fisheries were comparable to U.S. regulations.
During oral arguments March 26 for weekly and monthly planner classification case, Court of International Trade Judge Jane Restani told parties that the Harmonized Tariff Schedule is written in British, not American, English (Blue Sky The Color of Imagination v. U.S., CIT # 21-00624).
The Court of International Trade on March 26 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in the 2020-21 antidumping duty review on hot-rolled steel flat products from Japan. Judge Stephen Vaden said that since no party contests the remand results, which were voluntarily requested by Commerce so the agency could treat exporter Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co. as a mandatory respondent, the case is upheld (Optima Steel International v. U.S., CIT # 23-00108).
The U.S. brought a customs penalty suit against importer E-Dong U.S.A. for failure to pay federal excise tax on entries of soju bottles from South Korea. Filing a complaint March 28 at the Court of International Trade, the government said that the company entered the soju, a Korean spirit, via "material or false statement" by failing to reference any of the owed excise tax (U.S. v. E-Dong, U.S.A., CIT # 24-00066).
The Court of International Trade on April 1 lifted a temporary ban on nine fish types from New Zealand after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made new comparability findings regarding the wildlife protections on New Zealand's West Coast North Island inshore trawl and set net fisheries. The ban's lifting, which went unopposed by all parties, came after NOAA said that New Zealand established that its fisheries satisfy the provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The suit was brought by conservation groups seeking to protect the Maui dolphin.
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade: