Trade Law Daily is providing readers with some recent top stories. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a July 20 ruling found that the Commerce Department's initial post-sale price adjustment based on a late delivery penalty in an antidumping case was properly supported. The appellate court reversed a Court of International Trade decision which found that Commerce should have adjusted the price by the entirety of the exporter's penalty payment and not just one-third of it, as Commerce originally did.
CBP announced the launch of an Enforce and Protect Act investigation and the imposition of “interim measures” on BGI Group for alleged evasion of antidumping and countervailing duties on wooden cabinets and vanities by way of transshipment through Vietnam, the agency said in a recent notice. CBP will suspend liquidation and require cash deposits as of March 26, 2021, for entries from Vietnam from the BGI Group, which does business as U.S. Cabinet Depot.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's July 13 decision in favor of President Donald Trump's Section 232 tariff increase for Turkish steel past the 105-day deadline set by statute may be a serious setback for Turkish steel exporters (see 2107130059), but what it means for the remaining litigation challenging the president's authority under Section 232, Section 301 or any other statute granting the executive tariff powers is less clear, lawyers said in the days following the decision.
Porsche Motorsports North America failed to show that its exported, then reimported, trailer with auto parts and tools qualifies for a particular Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading that would have allowed it duty-free treatment, the Department of Justice said in a July 9 reply brief. Since Porsche acknowledged that certain articles it brought in from Canada had not originally been exported from the U.S. to Canada, the shipment fails to meet the standard for Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the U.S. subheading 9801.00.85, DOJ argued (Porsche Motorsports North America, Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 16-00182).
Steel producer Nucor Tubular Products Inc. will appeal a June 24 Court of International Trade opinion to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, according to a July 15 notice of appeal. The decision sustained the Commerce Department's decision to drop a particular market situation adjustment to the cost of production for South Korean steel in an antidumping review (see 2106240028). In particular, the case, originally brought by Dong-A Steel Co., concerns the 2016-17 antidumping administrative review of heavy walled rectangular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from South Korea. The case marked yet another instance of the PMS determination having been made on insufficient evidence since Commerce used "substantially the same record evidence" (Dong-A Steel Company v. United States, CIT #19-00104).
The Commerce Department will only partially apply adverse facts available for sales a diamond sawblade exporter made to its U.S. affiliate, which used a first-in-first-out methodology to keep track of its country of origin data when calculating the exporter's antidumping rate, it said in remand results filed by the agency July 13. The filing comes to the Court of International Trade after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit left it up to the trade court to determine if a further remand was needed. The Federal Circuit held that a remand was appropriate for Commerce to determine if it could disregard the exporter's U.S. sales using the FIFO methodology (Diamond Sawblades Manufacturers' Coalition v. United States, CIT #17-00167).