U.S. activated carbon producers Calgon Carbon Corporation and Norit Americas brought a complaint to the Court of International Trade on Feb. 21 claiming that the Commerce Department wrongly accepted an antidumping duty order administrative review mandatory respondent’s allegation of a ministerial error. The allegation actually concerned “a methodological issue, not a ministerial issue,” they said (Calgon Carbon Corporation v. United States, CIT # 25-00028).
For the third time, the Court of International Trade remanded part of the Commerce Department’s final results of an antidumping duty review on multilayered wood flooring from China.
Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves again remanded the results of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty review of Chinese-origin multilayered wood flooring. Choe-Groves questioned whether the department’s decisions during the review were “results-driven or cherry-picking” because the department, instead of reopening the record to correct erroneous surrogate value information, still insisted on simply removing a month of bad data -- resulting in a surrogate value inflation of 453% (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00190).
A domestic steel trade group brought a complaint to the Court of International Trade Feb. 7 alleging that a mandatory respondent in a tire antidumping duty review “was attempting to pass off an [non-market economy] entity as a market-economy entity” and should have been hit with adverse facts available (United Steel, Paper and Forestry International Union v. United States, CIT # 25-00004).
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit judges didn’t ask much as, on Feb. 3, Chinese exporters led by Carbon Activated Tianjin faced off against petitioners and the United States regarding the results of two administrative antidumping duty reviews on its activate carbon products. The exporters argued, among other things, that the Commerce Department used too narrow a category of product when selecting a surrogate value for the prices of an input (Carbon Activated v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2135, 23-2413).
The Commerce Department erred in picking Malaysia as the main surrogate country in the 2022-23 review of the antidumping duty order on activated carbon from China, exporter Carbon Activated Corp. argued in a Jan. 27 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Carbon Activated said that Romania was the better choice and that Commerce's use of Malaysia surrogate values for coal tar, sub-bituminous coal, hydrochloric acid, solid sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide was unsupported by substantial evidence (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00265).
After the Trump administration released a memo outlining the scope of trade action to be taken during his term, one thing became clear, according to a variety of trade attorneys: antidumping duty and countervailing duty rates are about to soar.
In a complaint brought Jan. 21 in the Court of International Trade, exporter East Asia Aluminum Company alleged that a Commerce Department investigation failed to properly account for its scrap byproduct, which East Asia Aluminum continuously reintroduces back into production, which caused a chain of circumstances resulting in a far-too-late affirmative critical circumstances determination (East Asia Aluminum Company v. United States, CIT # 24-00255).
In a complaint before the Court of International Trade filed Jan. 20, two exporters alleged that the Commerce Department failed to correct multiple ministerial errors during an antidumping duty review on Chinese activated carbon (Ningxia Guanghua Cherishmet Activated Carbon Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00262).
Various exporters led by Jiangsu Dingsheng New Materials Joint-Stock Co. challenged the Commerce Department's antidumping and countervailing duty reviews on aluminum foil from China at the Court of International Trade (Hangzhou Five Star Aluminum Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00231) (Jiangsu Dingsheng New Materials Joint-Stock Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00228).