The Commerce Department denied two Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests after completing a voluntary remand to reconsider its decision to initially reject the exclusion bids. Submitting the denials on Oct. 18 in remand results at the Court of International Trade, Commerce cited the International Trade Administration's analysis of the situation, which found that the domestic industry had enough capacity to take over for the subject imports (Maple Leaf Marketing, Inc. v. U.S., CIT #20-00125).
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Nippon Steel Corporation (NSC) challenges certain elements of the Commerce Department's third administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain hot-rolled steel flat products from Japan covering entries in 2018-19, in an Oct. 6 complaint at the Court of International Trade.
The Commerce Department wants a voluntary remand to reconsider a bevy of blanket Section 232 exclusion denials it issued to Voestalpine High Performance Metals Corp. and Edro Specialty Steels, the agency told the Court of International Trade in a Sept. 30 filing (Voestalpine High Performance Metals Corp., et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00093). Judge Miller Baker then stayed the time for plaintiffs to respond to this remand motion “until further order of the court,” in an order. The judge then instructed all parties to let the court know their position on court-annexed mediation to settle the issue of remand.
Five steel companies filed an amicus brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in support of a full court rehearing in a critical case on presidential power regarding the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs. The brief, filed Sept. 7 by Oman Fasteners, Huttig Building Products, Koki Holdings America, J. Conrad and Metropolitan Staple, was accepted by the appellate court Sept. 9. The five companies tap into the dissenting opinion at the Federal Circuit along with the Court of International Trade's original ruling to make the case that the appellate court erred in finding that the president could hike the Section 232 duties on Turkish goods well beyond procedural time limits (Transpacific Steel LLC, et al. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #20-2157).
The Commerce Department's proposed schedule to review Section 232 exclusion requests on remand is "necessary in light of Commerce's current limited resources," the agency said in a Sept. 9 brief. Replying to the plaintiffs' opposition to Commerce's voluntary remand motion at the Court of International Trade, the agency also urged the court to simply defer to the proposed schedule due to Commerce's limited resources and the non-prejudicial nature of the schedule to the lawsuit's parties. Many of the consolidated plaintiffs opposed the schedule, arguing that it was "unreasonable" with a "nonsensical" rationale (see 2108170072).
The case against United States Steel Corporation alleging that the Pittsburgh-based company misled the Commerce Department when it objected to Russian importer NLMK's Section 232 exclusion argues an unrecognized category of "unfair competition," U.S. Steel said in an Aug. 30 motion to toss the case. In a brief filed in the lawsuit at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, U.S. Steel said that it is immune to any liability stemming from its petitioning of the government and that NLMK's suit is barred by federal law (NLMK Pennsylvania, LLC, et al. v. United States Steel Corporation, W.D. Pa. #21-00273).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
A lawsuit seeking Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusions should be dismissed because the subject entries are not liquidated, the Department of Justice said in an Aug. 26 motion to dismiss at the Court of International Trade. The suit, brought by Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. and Gulf Coast Express Pipeline, is seeking the exclusions on 19 entries of steel pipe from Turkey and claims jurisdiction under Section 1581(a). However, a protestable decision needs to occur to claim this jurisdiction -- something the plaintiffs do not have, DOJ said (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., et al. v. U.S., CIT #21-00186).
The Court of International Trade on Aug. 26 dismissed a steel importer's and purchaser's bid to reliquidate two entries subject to Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, saying the plaintiffs had already received the relief available to them from the Commerce Department in the form of a product exclusion but failed to preserve their ability to receive a refund by way of an extension of liquidation or a protest.