The Court of International Trade upheld May 16 the Commerce Department’s affirmative circumvention finding for solar cells from Cambodia, saying again -- as it did in a concurrent case -- (see 2505160045) that Commerce’s reliance on one country-of-origin factor, level of research and development investment, was reasonable.
The Court of International Trade on May 19 sent back the Commerce Department's circumvention finding on solar cells from Vietnam just days after sustaining two circumvention findings on solar cells from Thailand and Cambodia. Judge M. Miller Baker said in the Vietnamese circumvention case that Commerce "arbitrarily treated its adverse facts available finding as the administrative equivalent of landing on 'Go to Jail.'"
The Commerce Department is asking for public comments on how it can identify "masked" dumping in light of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's ruling in Marmen v. U.S., which rejected the agency's use of the Cohen's d test. Commerce's International Trade Administration said parties should submit comments by May 30 regarding "alternatives to the use of the Cohen’s d test to define when prices differ significantly among purchasers, regions, and time periods."
The Commerce Department properly found that exporters Canadian Solar and Trina Solar circumvented the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on Chinese solar cells by sending their products through Thailand, the Court of International Trade held on May 16. Judge M. Miller Baker sustained Commerce's decision to put special emphasis on the amount of research and development investment into the companies' Thai facilities to show that the companies' processes in the country were "minor or insignificant."
The Israeli government moved for judgment May 9 in the Court of International Trade in its case challenging the International Trade Commission’s final injury determinations regarding brass rod antidumping and countervailing duty investigations. The commission failed to consider the impact of Israel’s conflict with the terrorist group Hamas on Israel’s sole brass rod manufacturer, it said (Government of Israel v. United States, CIT # 24-00197).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on May 9 upheld the Court of International Trade's classification of 14 mixtures of frozen fruits and vegetables under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 0811.90.80, the residual category for "other" frozen fruit.
The U.S. and domestic producer Ecker Textiles this week defended the Court of International Trade’s ruling that an importer’s canvas banner matisse was covered by an antidumping duty order on artist canvas. They disagreed that the order was void for vagueness, saying at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that the importer was trying to argue the order only covers the exact products made by domestic industries (Printing Textiles v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 25-1213).
Judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on May 7 questioned both exporter AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke and the U.S. regarding the exporter's proposed quality code for sour service pressure vessel plate and the Commerce Department's use of Dillinger's sales price as the cost of production for non-prime steel plate. Judges Jimmie Reyna, Timothy Dyk and Alan Lourie's questions regarding the non-prime plate centered on whether the issue was foreclosed by the CAFC's previous holding in Dillinger France v. U.S. (AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1498).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Apr. 9-25 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The Commerce Department's selection of benchmarks in assessing the provision of phosphate rock mining rights and natural gas for less than adequate remuneration programs weren't supported by substantial evidence, the Court of International Trade held on May 6. Judge Jane Restani held that Commerce improperly excluded sedimentary phosphate rock in constructing the benchmark for the phosphate rock mining rights program and failed to show Kazakh natural gas would be available to Russian purchasers.