In an April 14 opinion, Court of International Trade Judge Timothy Reif remanded in part and sustained in part the Commerce Department’s final determination in its administrative review of the antidumping duty order on chlorinated isocyanurates from China. He upheld the department’s usual two-step surrogate selection process under Loper Bright, but he found that Commerce erred in its selection of comparable merchandise for chlorinated isos.
The Senate Finance Committee held a confirmation hearing on April 10 for William Kimmitt to serve as undersecretary of commerce for international trade. In this role, Kimmitt would lead the International Trade Administration, the wing of the Commerce Department tasked with enforcing antidumping and countervailing duty laws.
The Commerce Department unreasonably failed to consider information in a scope ruling application regarding calcium glycinate and an International Trade Commission report in excluding the calcium glycinate from various antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on glycine, the Court of International Trade held on April 10. Judge Joseph Laroski called out Commerce for pulling a "single insight" from the ITC report "while inexplicably ignoring other pertinent information" in the report.
An attorney for exporters China Manufacturers Alliance and Double Coin told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit they were dropping their argument that it was a legal error for the Commerce Department to consider only one of four statutory factors in determining government control. The attorney, James Durling, was questioned by the appellate court during April 7 oral argument on his remaining point -- that the department’s decision to reject the exporters’ separate rate applications wasn’t based on substantial evidence (China Manufacturers Alliance v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2391).
Responding to a Court of International Trade request to discuss “the statutory scheme of who is eligible to apply for a separate rate,” wood moldings and millwork products exporters China Cornici and RaoPing said applicants shouldn’t need a suspended entry during the relevant review period (China Cornici Co. Ltd. v. U.S., CIT #s 23-000216, -00217).
Importer Honeywell pushed back April 4 against a U.S. motion for rehearing after the Court of International Trade sided with it to find its precut radial, chordial and web fabric pieces, used in airplane brakes, were “parts of an aircraft” rather than “fabrics” (see 2501300051). The trade court hadn't misapplied the Harmonized Tariff Schedule's General Rules of Interpretation, it said (Honeywell International Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 17-00256).
Ken Wainstein, a former U.S. national security prosecutor and intelligence official, has joined Mayer Brown as a lawyer advising on export controls, sanctions, foreign direct investment and other national security enforcement issues. Wainstein was most recently the DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Commerce Department erred in picking just one mandatory respondent in the 2017 review of the countervailing duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China, the Court of International Trade held in a decision made public on April 1. In a monster 117-page decision, Judge Timothy Reif remanded parts of the review, including the agency's decision on remand to stick with just one mandatory respondent.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York: