The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Importers Wabtec Corp. and Strato filed a scathing motion for judgment on Aug. 19 contesting the International Trade Commission's affirmative injury determination on freight rail couplers from China. The companies contested the commission's decision to rule on the issue at all, seeing as the proceeding was brought just weeks after the commission found that freight rail couplers from China didn't injure the U.S. market (Wabtec Corp. v. United States, CIT # 23-00157).
ITC Continues to Cumulate Russian, Argentinian, Mexican and Some South Korean OCTG in Injury Finding
Cumulation occurs on the date a petition is filed, not when the International Trade Commission votes, the ITC claimed Aug. 16 in opposition to a Court of International Trade ruling. It said this had been established by the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (Tenaris Bay City, et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 22-00344).
The Court of International Trade on Aug. 19 sustained the Commerce Department's decision not to amend the antidumping duty order on softwood lumber from Canada to revoke the order as to exporter Resolute FP Canada in the sunset review of the order.
After three remands by Court of International Trade Judge Mark Barnett, the Commerce Department on Aug. 15 yet again found that a petitioner’s evidence wasn’t enough for the department to investigate an allegation that the Korean government was providing subsidized electricity to South Korean steel exporters during off-peak hours (Nucor v. U.S., CIT # 21-00182).
The U.S. and antidumping duty petitioner Mid Continent Steel & Wire defended the Commerce Department's use of the Cohen's d test to detect "masked" dumping, in a pair of reply briefs at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Taiwanese steel nail exporters, led by PT Enterprise, challenged Commerce's use of a simple average for the denominator of the Cohen's d coefficient instead of a weighted average (Mid Continent Steel & Wire v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1556).
In the Aug. 7 Customs Bulletin (Vol. 58, No. 31), CBP published proposals to revoke ruling letters concerning child-sized portable toilets and forged titanium billets.
Antidumping duty petitioner Ventura Coastal and respondent Louis Dreyfus Company Sucos traded briefs on the impact and relevance the Supreme Court's recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which eliminated the Chevron principle of deferring to agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes (Ventura Coastal v. United States, CIT # 23-00009).
The Court of International Trade on Aug. 13 sustained the Commerce Department's countervailing duties on ribbon exporter Yama Ribbons and Bows pertaining to its reception of synthetic yarn and caustic soda, two ribbon inputs, for less than adequate remuneration. Judge Timothy Stanceu said Commerce adequately used adverse facts available in multiple instances of the subsidy analysis due to the Chinese government's failure to respond to the agency to the best of its ability.
The South Korean government urged the Court of International Trade to not confuse "disparity" with "disproportionality" in assessing the Commerce Department's de facto specificity finding on the Korean government's alleged provision of electricity below cost. Filing a reply brief on Aug. 12 in a case on the 2021 countervailing duty review on cut-to-length carbon-quality steel plate from South Korea, the Korean government said the fact that a few industries used a large amount of electricity doesn't establish de facto specificity (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00211).