The Court of International Trade on Nov. 8 upheld a Commerce Department scope ruling that importer Valeo North America's T-series aluminum sheet is covered by the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on common alloy aluminum sheet from China. Judge Mark Barnett sustained Commerce's consideration of and weight applied to various industry evidence along with its detailed discussion of heat treatment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Nov. 13 said then-President Donald Trump legally revoked a Section 201 safeguard tariff exclusion on bifacial solar panels, in a decision that gives the president wide discretion in taking tariff action. Reversing the Court of International Trade's decision, Judges Alan Lourie, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark said the president did not clearly misconstrue the statute to find that he could make a trade-restricting modification to past Section 201 tariff action.
The Commerce Department's cross-owned input supplier analysis in a case on the 2018 countervailing duty review of steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey "has a direct and precedential bearing" on the Court of International Trade's decision in the case on the 2020 review of the same order, exporter Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret told the trade court (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 22-00149).
The Court of International Trade on Nov. 7 dismissed an antidumping duty case from lumber importer West Fraser Mills for failure to file a complaint by the time limits set in court rules. West Fraser was challenging the Commerce Department's 2021 review of the antidumping duty order on softwood lumber products from Canada (West Fraser Mills v. U.S., CIT # 23-00209).
The Commerce Department arbitrarily rejected arguments from Canadian softwood lumber exporter Resolute FP Canada -- despite a "good cause" showing by Resolute -- when it found the company would be likely to continue dumping, in the final results of a sunset review, Resolute said in its Nov. 6 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade (Resolute FP Canada v. U.S., CIT # 23-00095).
The Commerce Department legally found that importer Valeo North America's T-series aluminum sheet is covered by the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on common alloy aluminum sheet from China, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Nov. 8 opinion. The case was remanded so that Commerce could address evidence that Valeo's product undergoes heat treatment, barring it from being classified as subject 3XXX-series core. Judge Mark Barnett said that Valeo did not present a "cogent challenge" to Commerce's finding that Valeo's T-series sheet "undergoes a combination of annealing and cold-working" that doesn't bar classification as a 3XXX-series alloy.
The Commerce Department erroneously used Malaysian tariff schedule subheading 4402.90.1000 as the surrogate value for coal-based carbonized materials in an antidumping review of activated carbon instead of the broader Harmonized System subheading 4402.90, exporters Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. and Carbon Activated Corp. argued. Filing their opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the exporters said Commerce's decision was based on "inaccurate and unsupported factual findings" (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-2135).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade granted importer Time After Time Manufacturing's motion to dismiss its own customs case concerning its entries of plant carts. The importer filed the case in September, arguing that its plant carts of Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 9403.20.0050, free of duty, and secondary subheading 9903.88.03, subject to 25% Section 301 duties, qualify for subheadings 9817.00.5000 and 9403.20.0050, both free of duty (Time After Time Manufacturing v. U.S., CIT # 23-00203).
Antidumping duty respondent Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret filed a second notice of supplemental authorities in its AD case at the Court of International Trade to point to a separate AD review involving a duty drawback adjustment and Commerce's requirement that only closed inward processing certificates be included in the numerator of Commerce's per unit calculation (Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 21-00616).