The Commerce Department needs more information before it will consider allegations that solar cell imports from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are circumventing antidumping duties on China, the agency said in a Sept. 29 letter. Penned to Timothy Brightbill, lead counsel for an anonymous group of domestic U.S. solar cell manufacturers that seeks the inquiry, the letter requested a slew of information from the domestic producers to clear threshold concerns, including the full name and address of each member of the anonymous coalition.

A conflict of interest allegation did not cause an antidumping duty investigation respondent to untimely file its questionnaire responses, the Commerce Department argued in a Sept. 27 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Responding to Tau-Ken Temir's brief explaining that this allegation was the reason for the delay in filing the responses, Commerce said that it did not abuse its discretion when it found that the petitioner did not interfere with TKT's ability to file the questionnaire responses (Tau-Ken Temir LLP et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00173).

A federal district court denied two Alaska shipping companies' bid for an expedited temporary restraining order against CBP penalties for seafood shipments found to be in violation of the Jones Act. In a Sept. 28 opinion, Judge Sharon Gleason of the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska held that the plaintiffs, Kloosterboer International Forwarding and Alaska Reefer Management, were unlikely to succeed in the case since the pair did not have a tariff filed to cover the transportation route in question.

The Justice Department moved for a voluntary remand in a duty evasion case after finding out that the parties to the investigation were not provided with certain documents in the investigation. DOJ argued that the remand should be granted since the parties should have the chance to make arguments to CBP based on this withheld information to inform the ultimate evasion decision (Norca Industrial Company, LLC et al. v. U.S., CIT #21-00192).

Requiring a CBP protest to obtain a refund under exclusions from Section 301 tariffs usurps the authority of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and unlawfully hands it over to CBP, importers ARP Materials and Harrison Steel Castings argued at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (ARP Materials, Inc., et al. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-2176).

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The Commerce Department decided to value a key solar cell input using Bulgarian imports rather than Thai imports after the Court of International Trade said the agency's use of the Thai surrogate data was improper, it told the court in Sept. 27 remand results (Solarworld Americas, Inc. et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #16-00134).

The International Trade Commission had no authority to deny lawyers representing LG Electronics access to confidential business information during a safeguard proceeding on solar cells from China, the lawyers argued in a Sept. 24 brief at the Court of International Trade. The congressional mandate for granting administrative protective orders (APOs) merely tells the ITC what it "shall" do, so commission had no grounds to deny a timely filed APO application, the Curtis Mallet-Prevost lawyers said (LG Electronics USA, Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT 21-00520).

Rimco, a steel importer, challenged the antidumping and countervailing duties assessed on its steel wheel imports from China as being excessive fines in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in a Sept. 22 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Rimco said that the extremely high and excessive AD/CVD rates were not remedial but in fact penal in nature, leading to the deprivation of property when CBP imposed the AD/CV duties (Rimco, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00537).

Entries of appearance to get on Commerce’s new annual service lists for antidumping and countervailing duty scope and anti-circumvention inquiries are due Oct. 27, the agency said in a follow-up notice to its recent final rule (see 2109160058 and 2109160062). Parties on the list will receive notifications of all scope ruling applications and requests for circumvention inquiries.