The Commerce Department legally found that importer Valeo North America's T-series aluminum sheet is covered by the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on common alloy aluminum sheet from China, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Nov. 8 opinion. The case was remanded so that Commerce could address evidence that Valeo's product undergoes heat treatment, barring it from being classified as subject 3XXX-series core. Judge Mark Barnett said that Valeo did not present a "cogent challenge" to Commerce's finding that Valeo's T-series sheet "undergoes a combination of annealing and cold-working" that doesn't bar classification as a 3XXX-series alloy.

The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 30 opinion sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in a case on the 2017-18 antidumping review of multilayered wood flooring from China. Judge Richard Eaton said Commerce properly calculated the surrogate manufacturing overhead ratio by using the indirect production expenses amount in the numerator and listing its reasons for taking out energy costs and putting them in the denominator. The judge also upheld the use of Romania's International Labor Organization data to calculate the surrogate's hourly labor value, saying "the data reflects hours actually worked in the surrogate country."

The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 23 opinion rejected importer PrimeSource Building Products' request for a stay pending its U.S. Supreme Court appeal of a decision allowing the expansion of Section 232 steel and aluminum duties onto "derivative" products. Judges Jennifer Choe-Groves, M. Miller Baker and Timothy Stanceu refused to overturn a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision rejecting a stay request. Baker, penning a concurring opinion, said the court lacks authority to stay the Federal Circuit's judgment, but even if it did, the importer has not shown irreparable injury because the court has the authority to order reliquidation.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in an Oct. 23 opinion sustained the Commerce Department's decision not to countervail the South Korean government's provision of electricity as part of the countervailing duty investigation into carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from South Korea. Judges Raymond Chen, Todd Hughes and Tiffany Cunningham said that, after the appellate court's previous rejection of Commerce's preferential rate analysis, the agency appropriately used a less than adequate remuneration analysis. Commerce also sufficiently investigated the Korean Power Exchange's generation costs and found no countervailable benefit, the court said.

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 20 granted Canadian exporter Midwest-CBK's motion to dismiss its case on whether its sales from a Canadian warehouse to U.S. customers are "sales for export to the U.S." or "domestic sales." Following a prior CIT ruling finding that the company's sales are for export to the U.S., the case shifted to a question of how to value the goods. Midwest-CBK said that obtaining evidence on this question is impossible given its business model, moving to dismiss the case to pursue its original argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 12 opinion made public Oct. 20 remanded parts and sustained parts of the International Trade Commission's injury determination on imports of seamless pipe from South Korea, Russia and Ukraine. Judge M. Miller Baker sent back the ITC's failure to give Russian exporter PAO TMK a chance to argue against its sole reliance on questionnaire data from one unnamed company as to German imports and data from another unnamed company as to Mexican imports. Baker also remanded the ITC's acceptance of "Company A's questionnaire" while rejecting "Company C's." The court sustained the commission's estimate of seamless pipe imports from Ukraine and refusal to determine what imports correspond to domestic like products.

The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 20 opinion sustained the Commerce Department's 2020 review of the countervailing duty order on truck and bus tires from China. Judge Mark Barnett said Commerce properly levied Qingdao Ge Rui Da Rubber Co. with an adverse facts available rate over its alleged use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program. The court said that the exporter failed to raise a host of challenges to the use of AFA administratively, barring relief on its claims at CIT.

The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 18 opinion remanded the Commerce Department's decision to deny importer Seneca Foods Corp.'s eight requests for exclusions from Section 232 steel and aluminum duties on its tin mill product imports. Judge Gary Katzmann granted Commerce's voluntary remand request for reconsideration of two of the denials, while also remanding the remaining six exclusion request denials after finding the agency acted arbitrarily and capriciously in denying the requests. Commerce did not adequately address contradictory evidence, the judge said, noting the decisions raise questions about Commerce's entire administrative process.

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 11 remanded the antidumping duty investigation on wind towers from Spain for the second time. Judge Timothy Stanceu said that after individually investigating exporter Siemens Gamesa on the first remand, Commerce illegally levied a 73% adverse facts available rate on the company after collapsing it with affiliated supplier Windar Renovables and five of Windar's subsidiaries. Commerce unlawfully relied on the conclusion that the 73% AFA rate on Windar set in the original AD investigation was final and controlling and improperly used AFA on Siemens Gamesa given the record evidence, Stanceu said.

The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 11 opinion partially sustained and partially remanded the Commerce Department's eighth review of the countervailing duty order on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China. Judge Jane Restani granted the U.S. request for a remand regarding China's Export Buyer's Credit Program and the datasets used to set a benchmark for ocean freight. The court also sent back Commerce's use of a 2010 Thai Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis report in setting the land value benchmark and its de jure specificity finding regarding benefits received from a program that makes income from investment gains derived by a resident enterprise via direct investment in another resident enterprise tax exempt. Restani upheld Commerce's 2017 benefit finding regarding land leases, which was left to coexist in the present review period.