The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on May 15 reversed a Court of International Trade decision sustaining the exclusion of dual-stenciled pipe from the antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Thailand. The AD order's scope language included standard pipe but excluded line pipe, and exporter Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Co.'s dual-stenciled pipes fit the industry specifications for both line and standard pipe. CAFC Judges Alan Lourie and Jimmie Reyna said that meeting an additional specification doesn't "strip away the qualification of these pipes as standard pipes." The majority added that the (k)(1) materials support the inclusion of dual-stenciled pipes under the order's scope. Judge Raymond Chen dissented, finding that the plain scope language is ambiguous as to whether it includes dual-stenciled pipe, and saying that the (k)(1) factors support exclusion of the dual-stenciled pipe.
The Commerce Department was wrong to deduct Section 301 duties from an exporter’s U.S. price as part of its antidumping duty calculation, that exporter said May 3 in defense of an earlier motion for judgment. It said Section 301 duties aren’t “normal import duties,” but rather remedial “special” duties that statute requires be included in export price calculations (Neimenggu Fufeng Biotechnologies Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00068).
The presumption of foreign state control in antidumping duty cases doesn't disappear after the exporter presents "minimal contradictory evidence," the government said in a reply brief on May 1 at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Contrary to claims made by exporters Aeolus Tyre Co. and Guizhou Tyre Co., the government said, the Commerce Department "has long required respondents to demonstrate autonomy with respect to" all four criteria used to assess freedom from foreign state control, even for companies only minority-owned by a government entity (Guizhou Tyre Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2163).
A Chinese brick exporter fought back April 29 against opposition to its motion for judgment by the U.S. (see 2402130053) and domestic producers (see 2403120068), saying that its products weren't circumventing antidumping and countervailing duties on magnesia carbon bricks from China because the products are actually magnesia alumina graphite bricks, which are duty-free. The Commerce Department is “cherry-picking” evidence from prior scope rulings to prove otherwise, it said (Fedmet Resources v. U.S., CIT # 23-00117).
The U.S. and petitioner Nucor Corp. defended the Commerce Department's use of partial adverse facts available against exporter Salzgitter Flachstahl in the antidumping duty investigation on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from Germany, in a pair of reply briefs at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The government said the steel company said Commerce properly identified a gap in the record stemming from Salzgitter's failure to submit manufacturer information for 28,000 of its sales from an affiliated reseller, Salzgitter Mannesmann Stahlhandel (AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1219).
Several importers appealed for relief April 22 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, saying in their opening brief that the International Trade Commission wrongly reached an affirmative critical circumstances determination regarding their Vietnamese honey imports and the Court of International Trade erroneously upheld it (Sweet Harvest Foods v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1370).
A manufacturer must have attributed to them all subsidies received by a cross-owned input supplier’s upstream product that is “primarily dedicated to the production of the downstream product,” a domestic petitioner said in an April 17 brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. It also argued that the “downstream product” doesn’t need to be “subject merchandise” (Gujarat Fluorochemicals v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1268).
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In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the U.S. and defendant-appellee petitioners fought back against an importer’s opening brief that argued a Commerce Department scope ruling “would overturn more than 10 years of black-letter law” (Valeo North America v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1189).
In April 3 oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the government said that the 1930 Tariff Act was recently amended to “explicitly not require” the Commerce Department to show that an exporter’s rate reflects its commercial reality (Pro-Team Coil Nail Enterprise v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2241).