The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 24 opinion denied plaintiff Grupo Simec's bid for a preliminary injunction against cash deposits in an antidumping duty case covering rebar from Mexico. Judge Stephen Vaden said Grupo Simec failed to clear the "high standard" of proving it would suffer irreparable harm absent the injunction because the company failed to show the "immediacy" of the harm it would suffer should it continue to pay cash deposits.
The commerce secretary's report allowing President Donald Trump to take tariff action on steel and aluminum imports under Section 232 is not subject to the Administrative Procedure Act nor can it be reviewed for arbitrariness, the U.S. argued in a Feb. 20 reply brief at the U.S. Supreme Court. Even if it was up for review, the secretary did not misconstrue the statute since it does not require the report to make a finding on the imminent nature of any threat to national security, the government said (USP Holdings, et al. v. United States, U.S. Sup. Ct. # 22-565).
The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 17 opinion made public Feb. 24 upheld the Commerce Department's interpretation of the Major Inputs Rule to allow the use of third-country surrogate data as "information available" for finding the cost of production of a major input bought from an affiliated non-market economy-based supplier.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department arbitrarily and capriciously applied partial adverse facts available when calculating a final antidumping duty on tapered roller bearings, even though the missing information was irrelevant and could not be obtained from unrelated third parties, manufacturer Tainai said in a Feb. 21 complaint to the Court of International Trade (Shanghai Tainai Bearing v. U.S., CIT # 23-00020).
Defendant-intervenor Endura Products dropped out of an Enforce and Protect Act case at the Court of International Trade after its bid for a stay in the action pending the resolution of a scope proceeding also at the trade court was denied (see 2302060069). Submitting a motion to withdraw Feb. 21, Endura said it "no longer has an interest in the current appeal" (Columbia Aluminum Products v. United States, CIT # 19-00185).
The Commerce Department "explicitly mischaracterized record evidence" when it said countervailing duty respondent Qingdao Ge Rui Da Rubber Co.'s (GRT's) only U.S. customer didn't certify that it had not used China's Export Buyer's Credit Program, the respondent argued in a Feb. 17 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade. Commerce also failed to properly use adverse facts available over the EBCP, since the agency is required to find whether any information on the record could fill the gap that renders AFA unnecessary, but did not, the motion said (Qingdao Ge Rui Da Rubber Co., Ltd., v. United States, CIT # 22-00229).
A horizontal lawnmower engine should be excluded from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on certain vertical shaft engines between 99cc and up to 225cc from China, given the plain language of the orders' scope excludes horizontal engines, exporter Zhejiang Amerisun Technology Co. argued in a Feb. 21 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Zhejiang Amerisun Technology Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00011).
The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 23 order denied antidumping respondent SeAH Steel's request for reconsideration of the court's opinion upholding the Commerce Department's use of the Cohen's d test as part of its differential pricing analysis. SeAH said the case should be reconsidered given the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's opinion in Stupp v. U.S. calling into question the use of the test, which is used to root out "masked" dumping. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ruled the use of an entire population of data rather than just a sample "sufficiently negates" the questions raised in Stupp.
The question of whether the Commerce Department has the statutory authority to conduct expedited reviews in countervailing duty investigations constitutes a "major question" that requires explicit delegation from Congress as established in the Supreme Court's West Virginia v. EPA decision, the Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations said in a supplemental brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Feb. 22 (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-1021).