The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 24 order sent back the Commerce Department's final determination in the countervailing duty investigation on granular polytetrafluoroethylene from India. Judge Timothy Stanceu said that, on remand, Commerce must drop the 26.5% estimated subsidy rate for the provision of land by the State Industrial Development Corp. and reconsider the estimated subsidy rate for the provision of land from the Gujarat Industrial Development Corp.
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 23 order sent back the Commerce Department's decision to deny NLMK Pennsylvania's Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests for certain steel slabs. Judge Claire Kelly found Commerce did not properly support its positions that the exclusion objectors offered a "suitable substitute" for the steel slab needed by NLMK and could provide NLMK with enough quantity.
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 18 opinion sent back the Commerce Department's final results in an antidumping review on heavy walled rectangular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Mexico. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said comments from petitioner Nucor Tubular Products on ministerial errors present in the rate calculations for respondents Maquilacero and Prolamsa were improperly denied as untimely. The comments qualify for an exception to the rule that the notes be timely filed because the errors arose after the review's final results, the judge said.
The Court of International Trade in a confidential Dec. 22 opinion made public Jan. 13 upheld parts and sent back parts of the Commerce Department's sixth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China. Judge Richard Eaton said Commerce properly used adverse facts available for respondent Sino-Maple based on the company's failure to provide constructed export price information on a per-transaction basis for U.S. sales that third-country manufacturers made to its U.S. affiliate. The judge, however, sent back the AFA rate itself, finding the agency can't set the AFA rate for one respondent at the highest transaction-specific margin for the other respondent. Eaton also upheld Commerce's decisions to reject separate rate applications from Scholar Home and Baishan Huafeng.
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 11 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a case over the antidumping review of large power transformers from South Korea. On remand, Commerce hit respondent Hyundai Electric & Energy Systems with total adverse facts available for missing service-related revenues and the exporter's failure of the completeness test at verification. Judge Mark Barnett said substantial evidence backed the use of total AFA, as opposed to partial AFA as claimed by Hyundai.
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 10 upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a case involving the 2018 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on solar cells from China. On remand, Commerce said that because one of respondent Wuxi Tianran Photovoltaic's U.S. customers did not participate in the review's virtual verification, the agency didn't have enough information to verify Wuxi Tianran did not benefit from China's Export Buyer's Credit Program. The respondent conceded that Commerce complied with the trade court's remand orders.
The Commerce Department properly found it had enough industry support to kick off the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations into quartz surface products (QSP) from India, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held in a Jan. 5 opinion. Upholding the Court of International Trade's ruling, Judges Kimberly Moore, Alan Lourie and Sharon Prost ruled that Commerce permissibly found the term "producer" did not include QSP fabricators and backed its finding that fabricators are not producers with substantial evidence via its six-factor production-related activities test.
The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 20 opinion made public Jan. 4 upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a case on the 2017-18 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China. In the remand results, Commerce dropped its use of partial adverse facts available for unreported factors of production data, reverting to neutral facts available, and changed how it values silver paste using Malaysian surrogate data. The agency maintained positions previously sent back by the trade court on how to value backsheets and ethyl vinyl acetate using surrogate data, offering new explanations now to Judge Claire Kelly's liking.
The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 21 opinion sent back a Commerce Department scope ruling that importer Valeo North America's heat-treated T-series aluminum sheet is covered by the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on common alloy aluminum sheet from China. Judge Mark Barnett took issue with Commerce's interpretation of the phrase "3XXX-series" in the scope to include certain unregistered alloys under the order. The judge also remanded the case for Commerce to address evidence that Valeo's product undergoes heat-treatment.
The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 22 opinion granted plaintiff Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee's motion for a preliminary injunction in an Enforce and Protect Act case. Judge Richard Eaton ruled that the industry group sufficiently proved that it will be "immediately and irreparably" harmed without the injunction barring liquidation of importer Kingtom Aluminio's aluminum extrusions until the litigation has ended. The judge also ruled that "it cannot be said at this time that Plaintiff does not have a 'fair chance' of success on the merits" given CBP has asked for voluntary remand or reversed itself in several cases with the same merchandise and parties.