The Court of International Trade in a decision made public Nov. 15 sustained parts and remanded parts of the antidumping duty investigation on lemon juice from Brazil. Judge Claire Kelly rejected the Commerce Department's definition of "partners" in sending back the agency's finding that exporter Louis Dreyfus Co. Sucos and an unnamed supplier aren't affiliated. Conducting an analysis of the affiliation statute under Loper Bright, Kelly said Congress didn't expressly give Commerce the authority to define the term "partners." The judge then defined the term as "a for profit cooperative endeavor in which parties share in risk and reward." The judge remanded the issue for Commerce to apply this definition in its affiliation analysis between Louis Dreyfus Co. and the supplier.
The Court of International Trade in a decision made public Nov. 15 held that Congress meant to give the Commerce Department wide latitude to correct for "masked" dumping, sustaining the agency's differential pricing analysis. Judge Claire Kelly previously rejected exporter Garg Tube's challenge to the differential pricing analysis on the grounds that the company failed to exhaust its administrative remedies. In response to Garg's claim that the end of judicial deference to agencies' interpretations of federal statutes eliminated the need for exhaustion here, Kelly said this claim must fail because a statutory interpretation of the applicable statute doesn't "materially alter the result in this case." Kelly also sustained Commerce's decision on remand to drop its use of adverse facts available against Garg Tube.
Exporter Hoshine Silicon (Jia Xiang) Industry Co. has no statutory or constitutional standing to challenge CBP's issuance of or refusal to modify the withhold release order on silica-based products made by its parent company Hoshine Silicon or its subsidiaries, the U.S. argued. Filing a reply brief at the Court of International Trade on Nov. 8, the government said Hoshine offered an incorrect "zone of interests" analysis to bolster its claim of statutory standing (Hoshine Silicon (Jia Xing) Industry Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00048).
A Venezuela-based subsidiary of Telefonica, a global telecommunications operator based in Spain, will pay over $85.2 million to settle charges that the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, DOJ announced. The U.S. alleged that Telefonica Venezolana bribed Venezuelan government officials in exchange for preferential access to U.S. dollars in a currency auction.
The Commerce Department wrongly determined in a scope ruling that an importer's pencils hadn’t been substantially transformed in the Philippines solely because a Chinese-origin input, wooden slats, were custom-manufactured for use in pencil production, that importer said in a motion for judgment Nov. 8 (School Specialty v. U.S., CIT # 24-00098).
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's decision on remand to not apply partial adverse facts available against exporter Garg Tube in the 2018-19 review of the antidumping duty order on welded carbon steel standard pipes and tubes from India. Judge Claire Kelly issued a confidential decision deciding the matter, giving the parties until Nov. 14 to review the confidential information in the opinion (Garg Tube Export v. U.S., CIT # 21-00169).
After the Court of International Trade ruled that a Section 301 exclusion for side protective attachments for trucks is a principal use provision, not an eo nomine one (see 2410070030), a vehicle accessories importer asked CIT Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves on Nov. 6 to either reconsider or let it bring an interlocutory appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Keystone Automotive Operations v. U.S., CIT # 21-00215).
In response to U.S. opposition (see 2410090041) to its motion for judgment (see 2408010044), an aluminum importer again said Nov. 5 that its manufacturer’s production in South Korea was not minor or insignificant (Hanon Systems Alabama Corp. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00013).
Judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit questioned claims from both exporter Dongkuk S&C Co. and the Commerce Department during Nov. 5 oral argument in a suit on the antidumping duty investigation on utility scale wind towers from South Korea (Dongkuk S&C Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1419).
Exporter POSCO argued on Nov. 5 that the Commerce Department's finding that the South Korean government's provision of electricity below costs is de facto specific is unsupported by substantial evidence. Filing a reply brief at the Court of International Trade, POSCO said Commerce's specificity finding "relies on a random grouping of the steel industry with two other unrelated industries" to find that the steel industry gets a disproportionate amount of the subsidy (POSCO v. United States, CIT # 24-00006).