Court of International Trade activity

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

CBP has unlawfully withheld antidumping duty refunds on tire cord quality wire rod from South Korea for years after the Commerce Department rescinded the order and required refunds, Kiswire Inc. (KI) said in an Oct. 12 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Kiswire Inc. v. United States, CIT # 22-00285).

The Commerce Department decided to grant Universal Tube and Plastic Industries a level of trade adjustment in an antidumping duty review on remand at the Court of International Trade. Submitting its redetermination on Oct. 13, Commerce found Universal made its home market sales at two LOTs, though it continued to deny Universal a constructed export price offset. The result was a weighted-average dumping margin of 1.18% for Universal (Universal Tube and Plastic Indus. v. United States, CIT #20-03944).

The Commerce Department must reconsider or further explain its decision not to investigate off-peak electricity provided for less than adequate remuneration, the Court of International Trade held in an Oct. 5 opinion made public Oct.12. Judge Mark Barnett also sent back Commerce's failure to attribute subsidies to a respondent that had been given to the respondent's affiliate in connection with the purchase of steel scrap and a fixed asset. However, Barnett did uphold the agency's decision not to attribute the affiliate's subsidies in connection with the provision of services, raw materials and other fixed assets.

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 12 confidential opinion remanded the Commerce Department's final determination in the countervailing duty investigation on forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany. In a text-only order, Judge Claire Kelly ordered Commerce to reconsider its position that the KAV program -- a concession fee ordinance program for public transport routes -- is a specific subsidy, and its rate calculations for the Electricity Tax Act and the Energy Tax Act. Kelly, in a letter to litigants, gave parties to the case until Oct. 19 to review the confidential information in the opinion (BGH Edelstahl Siegen v. United States, CIT #21-00080).

The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 5 opinion made public Oct. 12 upheld parts and sent back parts of the Commerce Department's final results in the 2018 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from South Korea. Judge Mark Barnett held that Commerce must reconsider or further explain its decision not to investigate off-peak electricity sold for less than adequate remuneration and its decision not to treat respondent POSCO's affiliate POSCO Plantec as a cross-owned input supplier for the supply of scrap.

Judge Stephen Vaden never sought his nomination to the Court of International Trade. Rather, during a trip to San Francisco while serving as general counsel to USDA, he got an intriguing phone call. Using his deductive powers, Vaden knew the call could only have originated from one place: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Walking on the streets of San Francisco, he waited until he could slip back into his hotel to take the call, because who takes a call from the White House on the street?

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The U.S. made it "crystal clear" that "no decision-maker could have reasonably" found that the U.S. industry made certain steel slabs in enough quantity to warrant rejecting steel company NLMK Pennsylvania's requests for Section 232 tariff exclusions, NLMK argued in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. DOJ argued that the Commerce Department's regulations on quality criterion exclude the consideration of slab size when determining if there's enough capacity to make the merchandise in question in the U.S. NLMK said that argument contradicts the language of the regulation itself and is "nonsense on its face" (NLMK Pennsylvania v. United States, CIT #21-00507).