The Court of International Trade on April 8 sustained CBP's decision on remand to find that four importers didn't evade the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood from China. CBP reversed course on its remand decision after the Commerce Department's scope referral decision finding the companies' products subject to the orders was changed in a separate CIT case. Judge Mark Barnett said the case should be sustained after no parties contested the reversed evasion finding.
Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit questioned the Commerce Department's decision to pull forward a 78% adverse facts available rate from a prior antidumping duty review in the 2018-19 AD review on steel nails from Taiwan, but not the lower rate for the non-individually examined respondents (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2128).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 8 upheld the Court of International Trade's decision to reject importer Rimco's challenge of antidumping and countervailing duties on its steel wheel entries for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. While Rimco filed suit under Section 1581(a) or, Section 1581(i) in the alternative, Judges Sharon Prost, Richard Taranto and Todd Hughes said that jurisdiction would have been proper under Section 1581(c) since the action's "true nature" was contesting a decision made by the Commerce Department.
Changes to the Court of International Trade's fees and "Listing of Judges of the Court" were made March 20 and will become effective May 1, the court announced. The judges listings were amended to add new appointees Lisa Wang and Joseph Laroski.
In choosing a second mandatory respondent for a nearly 5-year-old Chinese passenger vehicle and light truck tires antidumping review and removing separate status from four other exporters that refused to participate, the Commerce Department fully complied with a 2023 Court of International Trade remand order (see 2302020032), the government said April 2 (YC Rubber Co. (North America) v. U.S., CIT # 19-00069).
The U.S. and steel slab importer NLMK Pennsylvania on April 4 settled the importer’s 2021 case contesting the Commerce Department’s denial of its 58 exclusion requests that certain steel articles be excluded from Section 232 duties (NLMK Pennsylvania, LLC v. U.S., CIT # 21-0507).
The Court of International Trade on April 4 upheld the Commerce Department's use of the invoice date rather than the contract date for the date of sale for respondents Kaptan Demir and Colakoglu Metalurji in the 2020-21 review of the antidumping duty order on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey.
The Court of International Trade on April 3 again sent back the Commerce Department's decision to countervail exporter KG Dongbu Steel's three debt-to-equity restructurings after initially declining to countervail them in the preceding three countervailing duty reviews on corrosion-resistant steel products from South Korea.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 4 sustained the Commerce Department's decision that Australian exporter BlueScope Steel (AIS) didn't reimburse its affiliated U.S. importer, BlueScope Steel Americas, for antidumping duties. Judges Kimberly Moore, Todd Hughes and Leonard Stark echoed the Court of International Trade in finding that it would have been "unreasonable" for the exporter to include the AD in the price charged to the importer because the "exporter itself was not responsible for those duties."
Court of International Trade Judge Gary Katzmann heard oral arguments April 1 in an Australian hot-rolled steel exporter’s challenge of an International Trade Commission's decision in an injury investigation to cumulate that exporter’s products with merchandise from other countries. The exporter argues that it also has invested $2.5 million into a U.S. manufacturing plant, so it has no incentive to injure its own domestic market (BlueScope Steel v. U.S., CIT # 22-00353).