Jacob Kopnick

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

Turkish steel exporter Habas Sinai ve Tibbi Gazlar Istihsal Endustrisi A.S. was denied a petition for a panel rehearing by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a May 20 order said. Habas had been seeking to overturn a March 30 Federal Circuit decision that affirmed the Commerce Department's imposition of a 14.01% countervailing duty on its exports of steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey. In its investigation, Commerce imposed its facts otherwise available principle since the exporter was not forthcoming about benefits received under a Turkish duty drawback program. Commerce derived the 14.01% rate from a prior rate the agency assessed on an export tax rebate program in a 1986 CVD investigation on welded pipe and tube from Turkey. Habas requested a rehearing of the decision on the grounds that it is unlawful to use an adverse facts available (AFA) rate from a program that Commerce has verified to have been terminated and that it is unlawful for the agency to fail to apply its own practice in selecting a rate for application of AFA.

The Court of International Trade erred in finding that the Commerce Department improperly applied a particular market situation when addressing purported distortions to costs of production in the 2015-16 antidumping administrative review on welded line pipe from South Korea, U.S. domestic pipe manufacturer Welspun Tubular LLC argued in its May 17 opening brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Arguing that Commerce's interpretation of the PMS statute is entitled to deference and that the agency's finding of a PMS in South Korea is supported by substantial evidence, Welspun argued that CIT's reading of 2015's Trade Preferences Extension Act in a decision issued by the lower court on Jan. 4 would lead to "absurd results."

U.S. Steel Corp. told the Court of International Trade May 19 that the public release of the administrative record in a case involving Section 232 exclusions should entitle the company to the right to intervene in the case. “Among the reasons U. S. Steel cited in support of its right to intervene was the use and contextualization of factual information supplied by U. S. Steel to Commerce,” the company told the court. The Commerce Department's inadvertent released of this information means U.S. Steel's “fear has been realized,” the company said.

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

Importer Strategic Import Supply wants a reconsideration of its case in the Court of International Trade, seeing that CBP granted a nearly identical protest to the one that was the subject of dismissal in an April 21 opinion. In a May 19 motion for reconsideration, Strategic Import Supply argued that CBP's recent decision to assess a lower countervailing duty rate on imports of passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China is new evidence that the underlying protests in the CIT case were timely filed and that CBP acted in an "arbitrary and capricious manner" (Acquisition 362, LLC v. United States, CIT #20-03762).

The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's second remand results which, under court order, added the full amount of duty drawback adjustment to two companies' export prices and nixed two circumstances of sale adjustments in an antidumping case on Turkish steel. Judge Gary Katzmann in his May 20 opinion ruled against arguments from petitioner Nucor Corporation that Commerce find another "duty neutral" methodology for allocating the drawback adjustment. Commerce had originally applied the adjustment to all production, effectively reducing the adjustment to export prices for Icdas Celik Enerji Tersane and Habas Sinai in an antidumping duty investigation on carbon and alloy steel wire rod from Turkey.

The Supreme Court of the U.S. denied a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by 24 importers challenging enhanced security fees (ESF) on goods collected by the Puerto Rico Ports Authority. Denying the petition on May 17, the Supreme Court ended the challenge of fees that importers claim cost more than $150 million. To collect the fees, PRPA contracted with Rapiscan Systems Inc., which conducted "non-intrusive scanning of shipping containers" entering Puerto Rico through the Port of San Juan. Despite a federal district court order enjoining Puerto Rico from collecting ESFs from operations not being scanned, Rapiscan, PRPA and Rapiscan's affiliate S2 Services Puerto Rico, continued to collect the ESFs for all cargo, including non-scanned containers. The practice only ended when the Puerto Rico Court of Appeals ordered PRPA to cease and desist from carrying out the collection of ESFs.

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

Judge Claire Kelly at the Court of International Trade probed the Commerce Department's process of determining whether surrogate country data is aberrational in antidumping cases, during May 19 oral arguments. In a case where she granted a motion for reconsideration following a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruling on a nearly identical issue, Kelly questioned Commerce's lack of clear criteria and "know it when I see it" approach.