The Commerce Department permissibly changed its reason for using partial adverse facts available against antidumping duty respondent Saha Thai on remand in the 2020-21 administrative review of the AD order on Thai steel pipes and tubes, the U.S. told the Court of International trade on Nov. 24. The government said Commerce complied with the basic tenets of administrative law by taking new agency action on remand, adding that the agency properly applied partial AFA to find Saha Thai is affiliated with BNK Steel Co., a home market customer (Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Company v. United States, CIT # 21-00627).
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
Steel plate exporters Hyundai Steel and Dongkuk Steel Mill filed a pair of reply briefs at the Court of International Trade on Nov. 20, contesting the Commerce Department's de facto specificity regarding South Korea's discounted off-peak electricity prices in the 2022 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on cut-to-length carbon-quality steel plate from South Korea. Both companies contested Commerce's grouping of three unrelated industries to find that the steel industry received a disproportionate amount of the subsidy (Hyundai Steel v. United States, CIT Consol. # 24-00190).
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
Importer USP Holdings on Nov. 20 voluntarily dismissed its case at the Court of International Trade regarding the applicability of Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusions. USP brought its case last month to contest CBP's denial of its protest claiming its steel entries were improperly denied Section 232 exclusions. Scott Johnston, counsel for USP, said in an email that the company ultimately received relief administratively after CBP agreed to void the denials. However, the case was initially filed, since the relief "came right at/after the 180-day period to challenge the Protest denials in the CIT." (USP Holdings v. United States, CIT # 25-00227).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Nov. 20 scheduled a case concerning deemed liquidation of duty drawback claims for oral argument on Jan. 8 (Performance Additives v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-2059).
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on thermal paper from Germany after the parties challenging the proceeding withdrew their challenge following the trade court's decision last month in Domtar v. U.S.
Printing plate exporter Fujifilm, which also manufactures its product in the United States, argued again Nov. 17 that the International Trade Commission had failed to properly take into account a manufacturing plant it shuttered mid-injury investigation that caused it to increase its imports (Fujifilm North America Corp. v. United States, CIT # 24-00251).
Antidumping duty petitioner American Paper Plate Coalition on Nov. 20 pushed back against respondent Fuzhou Hengli Paper's bid to add an "Excel datafile" to the record in the respondent's case against the AD investigation on paper plates from China on the basis that the document was never properly presented to the Commerce Department in the investigation (Fuzhou Hengli Paper v. United States, CIT # 25-00064).
Status reports from the government regarding the resumption of litigation have poured in to the Court of International Trade following the reopening of the federal government. Many cases were stayed by the trade court pending the lapse in federal appropriations, given that many DOJ attorneys weren't being paid and were barred from working during the shutdown.