The U.S. denied Sept. 9 that the Commerce Department was misinterpreting the statutory standard for determining the existence of sales made by an exporter at different levels of trade (Compania Valencia de Aluminio Baux, S.L.U. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00259).
Parties in an antidumping duty case at the Court of International Trade continued their dispute on whether the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo should eliminate any deference shown to the Commerce Department's definition of the term "partners" in 19 U.S.C. Section 1677(33) (Ventura Coastal v. U.S., CIT # 23-00009).
Southwest Airlines argued at the Court of International Trade that the U.S. violated the rules of statutory interpretation when it claimed that the airline isn't entitled to keep Customs Passenger Processing Fees paid by its customers on canceled tickets. Southwest said it "harmonizes" all the sections of the governing statute, 19 U.S.C. Section 58c, while the U.S. reads the law's collection provision in a way that isolates it from the rest of the statute (Southwest Airlines v. U.S, CIT # 22-00141).
Importer Precision Components filed a reply brief on Aug. 30 at the Court of International Trade in an antidumping scope case, telling the court that the Commerce Department characterized a "raw material as a component and thus impermissibly brought" the materials within the scope of the AD order on tapered roller bearings from China. The record clearly says "the materials at issue are not bearing components or parts of bearings and could not be used in the production of bearings absent significant physical processes performed on the raw materials" (Precision Components v. United States, CIT # 23-00218).
The U.S. on Aug. 21 defended its decision on remand to collapse respondent Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy with its affiliated wind tower supplier Windar and Windar's manufacturing subsidies. The government also defended its finding that Siemens Gamesa is a foreign producer and the ultimate 28.55% dumping rate assigned to the company, which was lowered on remand from 73% (see 2406250029) (Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy v. United States, CIT # 21-00449).
U.S. importer CME Acquisitions argued that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's recent decision in PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S. didn't overrule the appellate court's decision in Yangzhou Bestpak Gifts & Crafts Co. v. U.S. regarding how the Commerce Department sets the non-selected respondents' antidumping duty rate (CME Acquisitions v. United States, CIT # 24-00032).
Antidumping duty petitioner Ventura Coastal and respondent Louis Dreyfus Company Sucos traded briefs on the impact and relevance the Supreme Court's recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which eliminated the Chevron principle of deferring to agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes (Ventura Coastal v. United States, CIT # 23-00009).
Exporters Shanghai Tainai Bearing Co. and C&U Americas argued in an Aug. 13 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade that the Commerce Department's differential pricing analysis is not allowed by the statute in antidumping reviews and is only permissible for AD investigations (Shanghai Tainai Bearing Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00025).
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in an Aug. 13 opinion again affirmed the president's ability to make trade-restrictive modifications to Section 201 safeguard tariffs. Judges Alan Lourie, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark partially granted a group of solar cell exporters' motion for panel rehearing of its 2023 decision, which came to the same conclusion, so that the court could conduct a de novo review of the applicable statute, instead of reviewing whether the president's interpretation of the law was a "clear misconstruction" of the statute.