A remand where the Commerce Department reviews a particular issue is a new agency action and renders moot any arguments that a party did not exhaust its administrative remedies prior to the remand, said plaintiffs in an antidumping duty case, led by Ellwood City Forge Co., in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade on June 17. As such, the plaintiffs' arguments as to the agency's procedural obligations relating to on-site verification made during the remand proceeding were properly exhausted, the brief, recently made public, said (Ellwood City Forge Company v. U.S., CIT Consol. #21-00007).
The Court of International Trade in a June 24 opinion denied plaintiff Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps' move to amend its complaint in an Enforce and Protect Act evasion case. The company sought to "amend its complaint to explicitly contest CBP’s denial of its protests with respect to the xanthan gum entries subject to the EAPA" decision. Judge Gary Katzmann rejected the motion as "untimely and futile." The judge said the delay in amending the complaint was undue given how long it took the plaintiff to propose the change and its lack of attempts to make the change until deep into litigation. Katzmann also said the plaintiff failed to identify the specific protests it's contesting.
The U.S., in an amended complaint, continues to fail to show that importer Crown Cork & Seal (CCS) committed fraud or gross negligence over misclassified metal lid imports, the importer argued in a June 22 motion to dismiss at the Court of International Trade. Seeking again to have the trade court toss the U.S.'s first two counts in the case, CCS said the amended complaint doesn't provide any new facts that can revive the two counts which Judge M. Miller Baker already dismissed (U.S. v. Crown Cork & Seal, CIT #21-00361).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The International Trade Commission correctly found domestic industry was injured by imported mattresses in a set of antidumping and countervailing duty investigations, the commission said in a June 13 brief filed at the Court of International Trade. Despite arguments that the ITC failed to account for differences between mattresses-in-a-box and flat-pack mattresses, the commission said that it reasonably found the market segments interchangeable in AD/CVD investigations on mattresses from Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Serbia, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam (CVB, Inc. v. U.S., CIT #21-00288).
The Commerce Department improperly deducted Section 232 steel and aluminum duties from antidumping respondent Nippon Steel's U.S. price in an antidumping review, non-selected company Tokyo Steel Manufacturing said in a June 22 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Further, the agency erred by increasing the total cost of manufacturing to account for Nippon Steel's purchases of iron ore from its affiliated suppliers, the brief said (Tokyo Steel Manufacturing v. U.S., CIT #22-00180).
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has 32 extra days, until Aug. 1, to file its lists 3 and 4A tariff remand results in the Section 301 litigation, a three-judge panel at the Court of International Trade said in a June 22 order. DOJ, on USTR’s behalf, asked for a 60-day extension to Aug. 30 to fix its Administrative Procedure Act violations, citing the volume of work required to meet the remand order, plus the agency’s limited staff resources and the additional projects compounding its workload (see 2206210042).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department has failed to address the flaws found in the use of the Cohen's d test when using its differential pricing analysis (DPA) to detect "masked" dumping, exporter SeAH Steel Corp. argued in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Responding to the U.S.'s argument that SeAH has failed to point to any statistical texts that explicitly address Commerce's claim that it can properly use the test, the exporter said that the burden is on the agency to find supportive texts and not merely rely on the silence of statistical authorities (Stupp Corp. v. United States, CIT #15-00334).
The Court of International Trade in a June 17 opinion denied exporter Shanghai Tainai Bearing's and importer C&U Americas' bid for an injunction against cash deposits at the antidumping duty rate decided in the 2019-20 review of the AD order on tapered roller bearings from China. Judge Stephen Vaden said that the plaintiffs failed to establish a likelihood to succeed on the merits or suffer irreparable harm and that the balance of equities and public interest favored the U.S. government.