The Court of International Trade on Sept. 3 sustained the Commerce Department's application of its quarterly cost methodology to analyze exporter Officine Tecnosider's sales during the 2020-21 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on steel plate from Italy. Judge Claire Kelly said Commerce adequately explained its approach, which stemmed from difficulties using Tecnosider's U.S. sales to analyze correlations between sales and costs of production, and why it "produces reasonable and reliable results."
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In oral arguments Sept. 5, steel rebar petitioner Rebar Trade Action Coalition and Turkish exporter Kaptan Demir attempted to define whether a Turkish shipbuilding company, which sold scrap to Kaptan during the review period, was the exporter’s cross-owned input supplier (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1431).
The Commerce Department reasonably used adverse facts available against antidumping duty respondent Corinth Pipeworks Pipe Industry for failing to remedy deficiencies in its cost reconciliation submission, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Sept. 8. Judges Jimmie Reyna, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark also said Commerce wasn't required to provide Corinth with an opportunity to comment on the agency's analysis that led to the conclusion that the company's reported costs didn't reconcile with its financial accounting system.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Sept. 8 upheld the Commerce Department's decision to use adverse facts available against respondent Corinth Pipeworks Pipe Industry in the 2019-20 review of the antidumping duty order on large diameter welded pipe from Greece. Judges Jimmie Reyna, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark held that Commerce reasonably found that Corinth failed to cooperate to the best of its ability in the review by not remedying deficiencies in its submitted cost reconciliation. The court added that the agency wasn't required to provide the respondent with an opportunity to comment on Commerce's analysis that led to the conclusion that Corinth's reported costs didn't reconcile with its financial accounting system. The opportunity to comment only applies to information submitted by interested parties, not Commerce's internal findings.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated on Sept. 2 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 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Sept. 2 heard oral argument in a case from importers, led by Sweet Harvest Foods, against the International Trade Commission's finding of critical circumstances for the importers' Vietnamese honey imports, which led to the retroactive imposition of antidumping duties on entries made in the 90-day window prior to the suspension of liquidation. Ron Kendler, counsel for the importers, argued that the ITC violated the logic of the critical circumstances statute, while ITC attorney Michael Haldenstein and Melissa Brower, counsel for petitioner American Honey Producers Association, said the commission's decision was entirely in bounds of the law (Sweet Harvest Foods v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1370).
The Court of International Trade held that Section 1318(a) of the Trade Act of 1930, which lets the president grant duty-free treatment to certain goods "for use in emergency relief work," doesn't cover solar cells and modules. As a result, Judge Timothy Reif vacated the Commerce Department's duty "pause" on collection of antidumping duties and countervailing duties on solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam that were set to be collected from the four countries due to an anti-circumvention proceeding.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York: