The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 6 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a case on an administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen warmwater shrimp from India. On remand, the agency used respondent Z.A. Sea Food's Vietnamese sales to calculate normal value. The domestic shrimp industry contested this, arguing Commerce should use constructed value since there is no evidence the shrimp sold in Vietnam was actually consumed by the Vietnamese customers. Judge Gary Katzmann deemed the domestic industry's claims as waived "due to the lack of adequate argument."
The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 6 opinion upheld parts and remanded parts of the Commerce Department's final results in the 2017-18 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on welded line pipe from South Korea. Judge Claire Kelly upheld Commerce's decisions to find there was no particular market situation in the Korean hot-rolled coil steel market, recalculate respondent Nexteel's costs without making a non-prime product adjustment and recalculate the non-examined companies' rate. The judge again sent back the agency's further explanation of its classification of Nexteel's suspended production line costs.
The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 2 opinion found that the Commerce Department illegally used adverse facts available on antidumping respondent Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Co. Saha Thai omitted sales of line pipe from its U.S. sales database, claiming that line pipe is not within the antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Thailand. Judge Stephen Vaden found Commerce did not notify the respondent that its sales database was deficient, remanding the use of AFA. If Commerce continues to use AFA on remand, it must ensure it complies with the notice requirement, the judge ruled.
The Commerce Department is setting new antidumping and countervailing duties on solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam -- though collection is on hold per a presidential proclamation and subsequent Commerce regulation -- after finding imports from the four countries are circumventing AD/CVD orders on solar cells from China in the preliminary determination of an anti-circumvention inquiry.
The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 1 opinion denied the U.S.' partial motion to dismiss a case challenging the Commerce Department's decisions to issue liquidation instructions after an antidumping review based on its automatic assessment policy and to set an effective date for a duty determined through litigation. The plaintiff, Goodluck India, designated Sections 1581(c) and (i) as alternative grounds of jurisdiction for its claims. The U.S. sought to partially dismiss the complaint for its claims of jurisdiction under Section 1581(c). Judge Gary Katzmann said that since the motion "as styled is not the proper vehicle," the motion is denied.
The Court of International Trade in a Nov. 28 opinion sent back parts and upheld parts of CBP's evasion finding under the Enforce and Protect Act that Aspects Furniture International (AFI) evaded antidumping duties on wooden bedroom furniture from China. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves held that CBP acted improperly by retroactively covering entries made before the EAPA statute came into force, including in the EAPA investigation of merchandise found by the Commerce Department in a scope ruling to not be covered by the order and failing "to provide sufficient public summaries of confidential documents on the administrative record." However, the judge ruled CBP did not deprive AFI of due process by imposing interim measures before the importer had a chance to respond to the evasion allegation and did not illegally combine the EAPA investigation with a regulatory audit.
The Court of International Trade in a Nov. 28 opinion blocked imports of snapper, tarakihi, spotted dogfish, trevally, warehou, hoki, barracouta, mullet and gurnard from New Zealand's West Coast North Island multispecies set-net and trawl fisheries. Judge Gary Katzmann ruled that the plaintiffs in a case seeking a ban on imports of fish and fishery products from New Zealand and caught using techniques that have allegedly caused the near extinction of the Maui dolphin are likely to succeed on two of their claims.
The Court of International Trade in a Nov. 23 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's decision to drop its particular market situation adjustment to two antidumping respondent's cost of production for the sales-below-cost test. Judge Gary Katzmann cited a recent Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision, Hyundai Steel Co. v. U.S., which made such an adjustment illegal.
The Court of International Trade in a Nov. 18 opinion sent back the Commerce Department's denial of plaintiff GreenFirst Forest Products' request for a successor-in-interest changed circumstances review of the countervailing duty order on softwood lumber from Canada. GreenFirst applied for the CCR after it acquired Rayonier A.M. Canada and sought to get its non-selected companies' CVD rate of 6.32%. Commerce claimed that it did not start the CCR due to its "significant change" practice that it will not conduct the review where there is evidence of a significant change that could have affected the nature of subsidization. Judge Claire Kelly ruled that "it is unclear" why this practice applies since Rayonier did not have an individually calculated rate.
The Court of International Trade in a Nov. 17 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's surrogate data selection in the antidumping duty investigation on utility scale wind towers from South Korea. Judge Leo Gordon also upheld Commerce's remand results relating to steel plate cost smoothing. Previously, the court ruled that the agency must either further explain or reconsider its decision to adjust the steel plate costs for all reported control numbers. Gordon said that on remand, Commerce gave a "more thorough explanation as to how and why its cost analysis and the record" backed its decision to reject respondent Dongkuk S&C Co.'s reported steel plate costs.