The Commerce Department doesn't fail to act when it denies a Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion request, the Court of International Trade held. Instead, the denial is a "decision" and "not an action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed," Judge Stephen Vaden said, dismissing a host of claims from importer Prysmian Cables and Systems USA against Commerce's rejection of its exclusion requests.
The Treasury Department recently published more guidance on its outbound investment prohibition and notification rules (see 2412160044), including a new FAQ on how certain portions of the rules apply to in-house lawyers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit scheduled oral argument for the lead case on the Commerce Department's use of the Cohen's d test in its differential pricing analysis, for March 5 at 10 a.m. EST. The issue was previously remanded by the Federal Circuit for Commerce to explain its use of the d test despite not adhering to basic statistical assumptions, such as the normal distribution of data and roughly equal variances (see 2107150032). The agency said on remand that it didn't need to adhere to these assumptions, since it's using the entire population of data and not just a sample. The Court of International Trade upheld this explanation (see 2302270049) (Stupp Corp. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1663).
In a complaint before the Court of International Trade filed Jan. 20, two exporters alleged that the Commerce Department failed to correct multiple ministerial errors during an antidumping duty review on Chinese activated carbon (Ningxia Guanghua Cherishmet Activated Carbon Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00262).
Chinese manufacturer Camel Group Co. took to the Court of International Trade last week to contest its placement on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Entity List, arguing that the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force "utterly disregarded, ignored and trampled" its due process rights in a "flawed and poorly executed process." The company said FLETF illicitly conducted the process in the shadows, refusing to offer it access to any of the evidence used against the company, and that the decision to deny its petition to be removed from the list wasn't backed by substantial evidence (Camel Group Co. v. United States, CIT # 25-00022).
Leaning on Loper Bright, Chinese solar cell exporter Yingli Energy pushed back against the Commerce Department’s usual presumption that exporters in nonmarket economies are under governmental control (Yingli Energy (China) Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00131).
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 17 upheld the Commerce Department's decision on remand to not countervail three debt-to-equity infusions to exporter KG Dongbu Steel Co. in the 2019 countervailing duty review on corrosion-resistant steel products from South Korea. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves held that the evidence doesn't directly support a finding that the SouthKorean government pressured non-governmental institutions to take part in debt restructuring.
Responding to a second remand order by the Court of International Trade, the Commerce Department again chose to calculate review respondent Officine Technosider’s costs quarterly, rather than annually. It said its decision made sense despite the “unique situation” in which Commerce had access to only one quarter of Officine’s U.S. sales data (Officine Tecnosider SRL v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 23-00001).
The Commerce Department defended its finding that currency undervaluation in Vietnam is specific to the traded goods sector, submitting remand results to the Court of International Trade on Jan. 15. The agency addressed various points the trade court sent back for further explanation, including Commerce's statutory authority for its specificity finding and the information the agency found missing from the record as its basis for using facts available (Kumho Tire (Vietnam) Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 21-00397).
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 16 said the Korean government's full allotment of carbon emissions credits to exporter Hyundai Steel Co. is de jure specific. Judge M. Miller Baker issued a decision in a pair of cases on the issue, finding that the conditions for eligibility for the additional credits aren't neutral and are based on "the substantive character" of the company's "operations."