CIT Sustains Benchmark Pick for Vietnamese Land Rental Subsidy
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 8 sustained the Commerce Department's final determination in the countervailing duty investigation of frozen warmwater shrimp from Vietnam. Judge Leo Gordon held that the court "cannot agree" with plaintiff Soc Trang Seafood that Commerce acted unreasonably when it found that the Thailand Board of Investment's "Cost of doing Business in Thailand 2023" report constituted the "best available information on the record for establishing a benchmark to value land rented from government authorities."
CIT Sustains Commerce's Overhead Ratio Calculations in AD Review on Solar Cells
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 8 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in the 2017-18 review of the antidumping duty order on solar cells from China following a remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Commerce's overhead ratio calculations due to issues with the agency's energy and manufacturing overhead determinations. For energy costs, the judge said Commerce adequately supported its decision to use inventories costs in the denominator of the overhead ratio, since "some amount of energy costs is contained in inventories costs" and the agency can't strip out the non-energy costs. Regarding the manufacturing overhead costs, Kelly said the evidence supports Commerce's inferences that "inventories costs include some energy costs" and "the difference between cost of sales and inventories costs reflects manufacturing overhead."
CAFC Says Domestic Sales Can Serve As Basis for Transaction Value Appraisement
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 8 affirmed the Court of International Trade's ruling that sales from importer Midwest-CBK's Canadian warehouse to U.S. customers are "sales for export to the U.S." rather than "domestic sales" and thus were properly appraised using transaction value rather than deductive value. CAFC Judges Sharon Prost and Tiffany Cunningham, along with District Court for the District of Delaware Judge Richard Andrews, sitting by designation, held that the transaction value statute doesn't "expressly require that a sale be international or occur abroad." The court added that the case law and the statutory scheme don't support Midwest's claim, since they establish that "domestic sales may in fact serve as the basis of a transaction value appraisement."