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).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department adequately determined an exporter’s single sale during a new shipper review’s period of review was bona fide, the U.S. said Feb. 12 (Catfish Farmers of America v. U.S., CIT # 24-00126).
The Court of International Trade said in a text-only order that it "intends to consolidate" the nine cases challenging the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on aluminum extrusions from China and the nine cases challenging the countervailing duty investigation on the same product if no party objects by Feb. 19. All cases were assigned to Judge Mark Barnett last week. The judge said he set the Feb. 19 date so that only one administrative record needed to be filed in the consolidated action.
U.S. seafood seller Luscious Seafood pushed back against a petitioner’s argument that it wasn’t a wholesaler of domestic like product for an administrative review of an antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam, saying it faced “higher hurdles” in proving its status than a similarly positioned party (Luscious Seafood v. United States, CIT # 24-00069).
The Solar Energy Industries Association urged the Court of International Trade to not allow CBP to reliquidate entries of solar panels that were subject to a preliminary injunction from CIT, saying during oral arguments this week that there's not a strong enough reason to reverse CBP's inadvertent liquidation. The U.S. argued that a court order was needed to "effectuate" the court's suspension of liquidation and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's decision in the case (Solar Energy Industries Association v. United States, CIT #20-03941).
The U.S. on Feb. 11 filed a motion to strike as misleading a chemical manufacturer’s recent citation of a CBP letter, saying it was “a decision from a separate proceeding, issued by a separate agency” that had been brought up without sufficient prior notice (Cambridge Isotope Laboratories v. United States, CIT # 23-00080).
Litigants in a lawsuit on a drawback claim told the Court of International Trade in a joint status report that they don't believe the case is "amenable to mediation," though they said they are discussing whether the suit can be settled through a "stipulated judgment on agreed statement of facts." The plaintiff, individual importer Timothy Brown, said he gave the U.S. a "proposed stipulated judgment," which the U.S. is reviewing (Timothy Brown v. United States, CIT # 20-03733).
Japanese exporter Nippon Steel argued Feb. 7 that the standard that respondents comply with antidumping and countervailing duty reviews to the best of their ability doesn’t require respondents to break their own governments’ laws (Nippon Steel Corporation v. United States, CIT Consol. # 21-00533).
In response Feb. 10 to a steel labor union’s December motion for judgment (see 2412110059), the U.S. defended a Commerce Department scope ruling that temporary-use tires weren’t subject to antidumping duties on passenger vehicle and light truck tires from Taiwan, saying the union hadn’t exhausted its administrative remedies (United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union v. United States, CIT # 24-00165).