The Court of International Trade on Oct. 10 sent back the Commerce Department's use of partial adverse facts available against exporter Nippon Steel for its failure to submit sales data from some of its U.S. affiliates in the third review of the antidumping duty order on hot-rolled steel flat products from Japan. Judge Stephen Vaden said Commerce failed to grapple with Nippon Steel's limitations under Japanese law to collect this data from its affiliates.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Oct. 4 issued its mandate in a case on the president's ability to make trade-restrictive modifications to Section 201 safeguards. In August, the court partially reconsidered its initial decision finding that the president can make such adjustments (see 2408130019). The court conducted a de novo review of the applicable statute in its decision following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which said courts can't defer to agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes. The appellate court issued its mandate in the case after the Solar Energy Industries Association didn't appeal the matter to the Supreme Court (Solar Energy Industries Association v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-1392).
Importers led by Tenaris Bay City sent comments to the Court of International Trade last week opposing the International Trade Commission's separate decisions to cumulate both Russian and South Korean oil country tubular goods with goods from Argentina and Mexico. Tenaris Bay argued that the ITC improperly interpreted the statute in defining the phrase "compete with," which "uses the present tense and thus denotes" that the goods in question must compete with the like product during the "months leading up to and including vote day" (Tenaris Bay City v. United States, CIT Consol. # 22-00344).
A number of plaintiffs in a large case opposing a scope inquiry and finding of circumvention for hardwood plywood raised Sept. 30 the new Loper Bright standard of deference. They said that the whole point of the now-defunct Chevron standard was to delegate authority to agencies in deference to agency expertise for technical issues; the U.S. can’t make the same argument now that that exact argument has been explicitly overturned, they said (Shelter Forest International Acquisition v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 23-00144).
A Belgium citric acid exporter isn’t alleging any flaw in its treatment in a review -- it’s just trying to challenge the settled, and reasonable, Commerce Department practice of never using quarterly cost allocation analyses for conversion costs in reviews, the U.S. said Sept. 27 (Citribel v. U.S., CIT # 24-00010).
The U.S. pushed back Sept. 20 against a Turkish steel exporter’s argument that the Commerce Department shouldn’t have determined during a review that its “sale dates” are the invoice dates, rather than dates of contract (see 2407250026) (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 24-00018).
The U.S. on Sept. 20 defended its decision on remand to not apply partial adverse facts available against exporter Garg Tube, claiming that the exporter was "fully cooperative," having made multiple attempts to get cost information from an unaffiliated supplier. The government said Commerce couldn't find enough evidence to show that the potential leverage Garg Tube could exert over the supplier supports the use of AFA (Garg Tube Export v. U.S., CIT # 21-00169).
A plaintiff opposed Sept. 13 a CBP redetermination upon remand that again found three importers evaded antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese plywood by transshipping the product through Cambodia (see 2405300058), again arguing the agency’s decision lacked substantial evidence (American Pacific Plywood v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 20-03914).
U.S. seafood seller Luscious Seafood argued on Sept. 13 that the Commerce Department misinterpreted the statute when it found that the company didn't qualify as a bona fide wholesaler of the domestic like product. As a result of its finding, Commerce found Luscious' request for administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam invalid (Luscious Seafood v. United States, CIT # 24-00069).