DOJ Swaps Lead Counsel for Activated Carbon AD Case at CAFC
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Feb. 8 order allowed the U.S. to change its primary counsel in an antidumping duty case. The government moved to go with Margaret Jantzen instead of Mollie Finnan after Finnan became unavailable for oral argument in the proceeding (Carbon Activated Tianjin, et al. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-1298).
The case concerns the 11th administrative review of the antidumping duty order on activated carbon from China, covering entries in 2017-18, wherein plaintiff Carbon Activated served as a mandatory respondent. In the review, the agency initially chose Malaysia but used a financial statement from Romanian company Romcarbon to calculate the financial ratios. Commerce held that Romania was not a significant producer of similar merchandise, barring it from serving as the primary surrogate country.
The Court of International Trade initially remanded this finding, among other things, to Commerce. The agency then reversed course, declaring Romania a significant producer and using Romcarbon's financial statements but continuing to rely on Malaysia as the main surrogate. CIT then upheld Commerce's finding that the Malaysian data was more specific.