An aluminum foil importer argued Feb. 20 that the Commerce Department was wrong to find that a South Korean exporter circumvented antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese aluminum because the underlying Chinese inputs underwent “significant” processing (Hanon Systems Alabama Corp. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00013).
A World Trade Organization dispute panel on Feb. 20 found a U.S. attempt to revisit part of its countervailing duty laws as they pertain to subsidies on agricultural products violated the nation's WTO commitments. The panel said the U.S. failed to implement the findings of a previous dispute panel ruling, which said these same laws cut against the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in relation to a subsidy finding on ripe olives from Spain.
The Court of International Trade on Feb. 22 remanded the Commerce Department's remand results in the 2019-20 review of the antidumping duty order on xanthan gum from China. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves rejected the agency's continued use of total adverse facts available against exporters Meihua Group International Trading (Hong Kong) and Xinjiang Meihua Amino Acid Co., finding that the companies submitted evidence on the amount of duties it paid as requested by Commerce. Choe-Groves also said the data, submitted 56 days before the review's preliminary results, wasn't untimely. The court also faulted Commerce for continuing to not conduct a collapsing analysis of exporter Deosen Biochemical, ruling that the company wasn't given adequate notice that it could request a new collapsing analysis.
An antidumping duty petitioner said Feb. 17 that the Commerce Department accidentally included offsets for scrap not produced during the investigation period in its calculation of an exporter's normal value in an administrative review of the antidumping duty orders on Greek pipe (The American Line Pipe Producers Trade Association Committee v. U.S., CIT # 24-00012).
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).