U.S. importer CVB filed a complaint March 8 at the Court of International Trade claiming that the Commerce Department wrongly excluded importer Zinus' metal and wood platform beds from the antidumping duty order on wooden bedroom furniture from China (CVB v. U.S., CIT # 24-00036).
The Court of International Trade in an opinion made public March 8 sent back the Commerce Department's model matching methodology in the antidumping duty investigation on superabsorbent polymers (SAP) from South Korea. Judge Thomas Aquilino said that the agency didn't justify the methodology with sufficient evidence and that it used unverified data from exporter LG Chem while also failing to address evidence from the AD petitioner that the methodology allowed for LG Chem to manipulate its AD margin.
A petitioner in antidumping and countervailing duty cases on chassis from China that later began to import vehicle chassis from Vietnam said the Commerce Department was misapplying the scope of its orders on Chinese chassis from China that it itself had requested (Pitts Enterprises, Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00030).
Exporters Juancheng Kangtai Chemical Co. and Heze Huayi Chemical Co. filed a complaint on March 6 at the Court of International Trade to contest the Commerce Department's consideration of Romania as a surrogate country in the 2021-22 review of the antidumping duty order on chlorinated isocyanurates from China (Juancheng Kangtai Chemical Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00026).
Judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit during a March 7 oral argument prodded various statutory interpretations of U.S. countervailing duty law as it pertains to finding whether demand for a good is "substantially dependent" on an upstream product for purposes of assigning countervailing duties. If substantial dependence is established, Commerce may attribute subsidies to a raw agricultural grower to a later stage producer.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on March 7 said that importer RKW Klerks' net wraps products, used in a machine to bale harvested crops, are not "parts" of harvesting machinery under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Judges Richard Taranto, Raymond Chen and Tiffany Cunningham thus sided with CBP's classification of the products as "warp knit fabric," dutiable at 10% under HTS subheading 6005.39.00.
The following lawsuit was filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
U.S. importer CME Acquisitions filed a complaint on March 6 at the Court of International Trade to contest the adverse facts available rate for the non-selected companies in the 2021-22 review of the antidumping duty order on stainless steel sheet and strip in coils from Taiwan (CME Acquisitions v. United States, CIT # 24-00032).
International Rights Advocates said the Court of International Trade's recent decision in Ninestar Corp. v. U.S. "highlights the unreasonableness of CBP's delay in issuing a [withhold release order] against imports of cocoa products made with forced child labor in Cote d'Ivoire" (International Rights Advocates v. U.S., CIT # 23-00165).
The Court of International Trade last week ordered a hearing in a countervailing duty injury case on whether any party violated the court's rules regarding the bracketing of confidential information, suggesting that Rule 11 sanctions were on the table.