The Commerce Department failed to follow the "procedural prerequisites" for changing its position on remand when using adverse facts available against exporter Saha Thai Steel Pipe in an antidumping duty review, the Court of International Trade held on June 5. Remanding the review for a third time, Judge Stephen Vaden said Commerce ran "afoul of the most basic of administrative law requirements" when it "falsely claimed to keep its rationale the same" for applying AFA "while quietly changing its position."
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Following a voluntary remand which saw the Commerce Department maintain a prior determination, petitioner ArcelorMittal Tubular Products said that DOJ was inventing a new, post-hoc rule that entities couldn’t be collapsed across borders (ArcelorMittal Tubular Products v. United States, CIT # 24-00039).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated May 20-23 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 Court of International Trade on June 3 sustained the Commerce Department's selection of the financial statement of TMTE Metal Tech to calculate respondent Triune Technofab's constructed value in the antidumping duty investigation on boltless steel shelving units prepackaged for sale from India. The result is a negative determination in the AD investigation.
The U.S. and defendant-intervenor Wind Tower Trade Coalition each pushed back against exporter CS Wind Malaysia’s challenges to a 2021-22 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on utility scale wind towers from Malaysia (CS Wind Malaysia v. United States, CIT # 24-00079, -00150).
Pea protein exporters and an importer said May 27 the International Trade Commission is wrongly attempting to create a new legal standard for determining the existence of critical circumstances (NURA USA v. United States, CIT Consol. # 24-00182).
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn't allow the president to impose tariffs, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on May 29. A day after the Court of International Trade vacated and permanently enjoined all the tariff executive orders issued under IEEPA by President Donald Trump, the D.C. court went a step further and categorically ruled that IEEPA doesn't include the power to impose tariffs (Learning Resources v. Trump, D.D.C. # 25-1248).
Exporter Hyundai Steel and the South Korean government each pushed back again May 19 against the Commerce Department’s specificity finding, maintained after a remand, regarding the provision of off-peak electricity by the Korean government to Hyundai for less-than-adequate remuneration. The department completely failed to follow the trade court's remand order, they said (see 2504160043) (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00211).
Steel wire importer Deacero filed a motion for judgment May 19 saying the Commerce Department’s circumvention finding regarding its prestressed concrete steel wire (PC) strand, made under Section 781(a), represents a dangerous precedent that would let Commerce impose duties on all intermediate steel products and “endanger investment” in U.S. manufacturing (Deacero v. United States, CIT # 24-00212).