Again remanding the Commerce Department’s final affirmative determination in mattress exporter Zinus Indonesia's antidumping duty case, the Court of International Trade said that facts otherwise available weren't warranted in Commerce's construction of the exporter’s export price and that the department needed to consider new evidence in constructing its selling expenses.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
In Feb. 13 remand comments filed in the Court of International Trade, a domestic petitioner said that CIT erred in its ruling remanding a Moroccan phosphate fertilizer exporter’s CVD determination and that this forced the Commerce Department to incorrectly recalculate the exporter’s costs (The Mosaic Co. v. U.S., CIT # 21-00116).
The Commerce Department said in a new scope ruling Feb. 9 that some of exporter Asia Wheel’s 22.5 to 24.5 inch diameter steel wheels -- those with rims and discs made in Thailand or a third country out of inputs from China -- are not covered by AD/CVD orders on steel wheels from China.
An importer and plaintiff-intervenor in an ongoing case regarding Thai steel truck wheels said Feb. 13 that the Commerce Department was ignoring the plain language of a scope of the relevant antidumping and countervailing duty orders to find its products were in-scope (Asia Wheel Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00143).
Tire exporter Pirelli Tyre told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that the Commerce Department improperly applied its own legal framework for assessing whether the company rebutted the presumption of Chinese state control in the third review of the antidumping duty order on passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China. Filing a reply brief on Feb. 9, Pirelli said the agency ignored the policy's explicit directive to link all four of the factors concerning de facto foreign state control to a company's "export activities" (Pirelli Tyre Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2266).
The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 8 opinion made public Feb. 13 remanded parts and sustained parts of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on thermal paper from Germany. Judge Gary Katzmann sustained Commerce's inclusion of exporter Koehler Paper's "Blue4est" paper product within the scope of the investigation, its coding of the dynamic sensitivity product characteristic and its application of price adjustments for some home market rebates.
The U.S. on Feb. 9 argued the Commerce Department correctly considered all relevant prior scope rulings in finding that an importer’s bricks are within the scope of antidumping and countervailing duty orders on magnesia carbon bricks from China (Fedmet Resources v. U.S., CIT # 23-00117).
The Court of International Trade on Feb. 12 sustained the Commerce Department's use of facts available for antidumping duty respondent Euro SME's inland freight costs for its U.S. sales. Judge Stephen Vaden said that contrary to the exporter's claim that Commerce "threw the book at it," the agency "acted with deliberation, patience, and arguably stayed its hand when it could have drawn adverse inferences more broadly against such a seasoned respondent."
A citric acid exporter said Feb. 9 that the Commerce Department had been wrong to refuse to do a quarterly analysis of the exporter’s costs even though it had faced large cost fluctuations due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Citribel N.V. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00010).