The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 8 affirmed the Court of International Trade's ruling that sales from importer Midwest-CBK's Canadian warehouse to U.S. customers are "sales for export to the U.S." rather than "domestic sales" and thus were properly appraised using transaction value rather than deductive value. CAFC Judges Sharon Prost and Tiffany Cunningham, along with District Court for the District of Delaware Judge Richard Andrews, sitting by designation, held that the transaction value statute doesn't "expressly require that a sale be international or occur abroad." The court added that the case law and the statutory scheme don't support Midwest's claim, since they establish that "domestic sales may in fact serve as the basis of a transaction value appraisement."

The Court of International Trade on Jan. 8 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in the 2017-18 review of the antidumping duty order on solar cells from China following a remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Commerce's overhead ratio calculations due to issues with the agency's energy and manufacturing overhead determinations. For energy costs, the judge said Commerce adequately supported its decision to use inventories costs in the denominator of the overhead ratio, since "some amount of energy costs is contained in inventories costs" and the agency can't strip out the non-energy costs. Regarding the manufacturing overhead costs, Kelly said the evidence supports Commerce's inferences that "inventories costs include some energy costs" and "the difference between cost of sales and inventories costs reflects manufacturing overhead."

The Court of International Trade on Jan. 8 sustained the Commerce Department's final determination in the countervailing duty investigation of frozen warmwater shrimp from Vietnam. Judge Leo Gordon held that the court "cannot agree" with plaintiff Soc Trang Seafood that Commerce acted unreasonably when it found that the Thailand Board of Investment's "Cost of doing Business in Thailand 2023" report constituted the "best available information on the record for establishing a benchmark to value land rented from government authorities."

The Commerce Department did not improperly "relitigate" a previous negative injury finding on freight rail couplers from China when it conducted its antidumping and countervailing duty investigations into the same products less than two years after negative injury determination, the Court of International Trade held on Dec. 23. Judge Gary Katzmann said the scope of the previous and present AD/CVD proceedings are different in three key ways: they cover different physical merchandise, concern different countries of origin and cover different periods of review, sufficiently distinguishing the proceedings. However, Katzmann remanded the AD/CVD investigations on the basis that Commerce improperly disclaimed the authority to modify the orders' scope language based on an argument from importer Wabtec that the petitioner's theory of injury isn't cognizable regarding freight rail couplers that are imported attached to new rail cars.

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 19 denied exporter Fuzhou Hengli Paper's motion to supplement the record to add an Excel data file in a case on the antidumping duty investigation on paper plates from China. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves held that the exporter didn't properly file its exhibit in line with Commerce's procedures for filing documents on the agency's ACCESS system, since Fuzhou Hengli only filed its submission "on the one-day lag system on a temporary basis in connection with the barcode of the non-final rebuttal brief." The exporter never re-filed the submission "after one business day with the final rebuttal brief," the judge noted. By failing to re-file the next day, the respondent filed its final rebuttal brief without an attached exhibit, meaning the file at issue was never "formally placed on the administrative record," the court said.

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 18 again remanded the Commerce Department's countervailing duty expedited review of softwood lumber products from Canada. After multiple remands, the sole remaining issue concerns the calculation of the CVD rate for respondent Les Produits Forestiers D&G and its cross-owned affiliates, including Les Produits Forestiers Portbec. Specifically, the issue is the method of calculation used to adjust for the amount of lumber D&G and Portbec bought from unaffiliated suppliers when determining how much of the suppliers' subsidies were attributable to D&G. Barnett held that Commerce abused its discretion in the most recent remand by declining D&G's request to reopen the record to provide additional information to help distinguish sales affected by the subsidies. The judge said finality concerns don't overcome this failure.

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 16 remanded the Commerce Department's finding that circular welded steel pipe completed in Vietnam with hot-rolled steel from South Korea, India and China circumvented the antidumping and countervailing duty orders from these three countries. Despite siding with the U.S. regarding all of the legal challenges made to the circumvention determination by exporter SeAH Steel Vina, Judge Mark Barnett said Commerce failed to support its conclusion with substantial evidence. Barnett said the agency only based its conclusion on the circumvention statute's "mandatory" factors, adding that the statute requires Commerce to offer something additional to support a circumvention determination, which the agency failed to do here.

The Commerce Department properly found on remand that certain reductions in tax fines and penalties received by countervailing duty respondent OCP weren't de facto specific, the Court of International Trade held on Dec. 16. Sustaining the 2020-21 CVD review of Moroccan phosphate fertilizers, Judge Timothy Stanceu said applying de facto specificity to the program at issue would cut against the Statement of Administrative Action accompanying the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, since it's widely available in the Moroccan economy.

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 16 for a second time remanded the Commerce Department's scope ruling excluding certain carbon steel butt-weld pipe fittings made from Chinese fittings that underwent production in Vietnam from the scope of the antidumping duty order on carbon steel butt-weld pipe fittings from China. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said two of the (k)(1) sources used by Commerce, the International Trade Commission report and AD petition, don't support the agency's conclusion. The judge instructed Commerce to review the (k)(2) sources, including the "applicable industry standards" and "declarations from domestic industry executives." Choe-Groves also remanded the agency's substantial transformation analysis to determine the goods at issue's country of origin.

The Commerce Department interpreted and applied its regulations contrary to Section 751(h) of the Tariff Act of 1930 when it rejected petitioner Catfish Farmers of America's ministerial error allegation in an antidumping review, the Court of International Trade held on Dec. 15. Judge Timothy Stanceu said Commerce erred in only allowing the petitioner to raise ministerial error allegations regarding the final determination that couldn't have been raised in the petitioner's case brief, finding that this cut against the "express requirement of Section 751(h)." However, the judge did uphold the agency's decision not to use facts otherwise available against respondent CASEAMEX related to its reporting of its packing costs.