The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's remand results dropping a particular market situation adjustment to the cost of production for antidumping duties on South Korean heavy walled rectangular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes, in a June 24 decision. Mandatory respondent Dong-A Steel Co. is now set to see its dumping margin drop to 11%, and Kukje Steel Co. to 7.89%. Since HiSteel was not party to the litigation, it's "not entitled to revised rates calculated on remand," Katzmann said.

The Court of International Trade dismissed all but one of importer Maple Leaf Marketing's claims against Section 232 steel tariffs levied against goods shipped to Canada for further processing then re-imported to the U.S., in a decision issued late on June 22. Finding that the president has broad authority to determine the "nature of the action necessary to adjust imports that threaten the national security," a three-judge panel tossed Maple Leaf's challenges to the imposition of the tariffs on Canada, which Maple Leaf had argued was untimely, as well as to the assessment of Section 232 duties on steel articles qualifying for repair and alteration treatment under Chapter 98, among other things. The trade court allowed Maple Leaf's remaining challenge of the Commerce Department's denial of its request for exclusions from the duties to proceed.

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's finding that tapered roller bearings exporter Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export Corp. failed to rebut the presumption of government control in an antidumping proceeding, in a June 23 decision. After reconsidering rejected evidence as instructed by Judge Gary Katzmann, Commerce still held that ZMC could be controlled by the Chinese government. ZMC, through multiple layers of ownership, is owned by the Zhejiang Provincial State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission within the government of China, and a labor union for ZMC parent company Zhejiang Sunny I/E Corp. Since the ultimate owners of the labor union's shares were members of Sunny's government-run employee stock ownership committee, the Chinese government can exert control over ZMC, Commerce found.

The Court of International Trade remanded the Commerce Department's finding that the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy is a de jure specific domestic subsidy of Spain's olive industry in a June 17 opinion. Finding for the second time that Commerce’s interpretation of the statute is contrary to law in a countervailing duty investigation into ripe olives from Spain, Judge Gary Katzmann found that the agency cannot permissibly find that the CAP was a countervailable specific domestic subsidy since “there is no uniform treatment across the agricultural sector in the provision of benefits.” Katzman also found Commerce also cannot permissibly say that raw olives are a “prior stage product” of table olives to find that subsidies to olive growers are attributable to olive producers.

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in an administrative review of the antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel standard pipe and tube products from Turkey in a June 16 decision. The remand results brought Commerce's administrative review in line with the court's orders in a Feb. 17 opinion which told the agency to drop any particular market situation-related adjustments to the cost of production in the sales-below-cost test.

The Court of International Trade sustained in part and remanded in part the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping administrative review on welded line pipe from Korea in a June 7 decision made public on June 15 -- the second on the case. Judge Claire Kelly took issue with Commerce's decision to reallocate the costs of production for respondent NEXTEEL Co.'s non-prime welded line pipe products to its prime products when calculating NEXTEEL's constructed value in the review. The judge sustained all of Commerce's remaining determinations in the case including findings that a particular market situation did not exist in Korea for a key input of welded line pipe products and the agency's reversal, under protest, of its initial rejection of respondent SeAH's Steel Corp.'s third country sales data into Canada to calculate normal value.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on June 15 affirmed without opinion a lower court ruling that found women’s trousers made of a yarn extruded from a slurry that contained zinc nanoparticles are not classifiable in the tariff schedule as if they were made from metallized yarn. The appeals court’s Rule 36 judgment follows oral argument held Oct. 10 in the case, appealed by Lockhart Textiles. The decision is non-precedential, and contains no explanation.

The Court of International Trade sustained the final results of the second administrative review of the antidumping duty order on steel nails from Oman, in a June 14 decision. Judge Richard Eaton held that there was substantial evidence to back the Commerce Department's decision to use a Japanese company's financial statement to determine constructed value profit and indirect selling expenses for mandatory respondent Oman Fasteners, as opposed to an Indian company's financial statement. Petitioner and plaintiff in the case, Mid Continent Steel & Wire, originally contested the selection.

Importers must file protests to preserve their ability to obtain refunds under exclusions from Section 301 tariffs, the Court of International Trade said in a June 11 decision. Judge Miller Baker dismissed a lawsuit from importers ARP Materials and Harrison Steel Castings Co., finding the court did not have jurisdiction to hear their challenge since they did not timely file protests of the CBP liquidations assessing the Section 301 duties. The importers had filed their lawsuits under CIT's residual Section 1581(i) jurisdiction, but that provision was unavailable because the importers were actually challenging a CBP classification decision, CIT said.

The Court of International Trade again found that President Donald Trump violated procedural time limits when expanding Section 232 tariffs to steel and aluminum "derivatives" in a June 10 decision. Relying on its recent ruling in a similar case involving nail importer PrimeSource, Judges Jennifer Choe-Groves and Timothy Stanceu, as part of a three-judge panel, awarded refunds to Oman Fasteners, Huttig Building Products and Huttig Inc. The panel ruled that the president illegally announced the tariff expansion after the 105-day deadline laid out by Section 232, but denied the plaintiff's other two claims, without prejudice, on the procedural violations of the tariff expansion.