The Court of International Trade on Jan. 31 remanded for a third time the Commerce Department's use of Mexican wage data to calculate surrogate labor costs in the antidumping duty investigation on beer kegs from China. Judge M. Miller Baker said Commerce abused its discretion in rejecting Brazilian data, favored by petitioner American Keg, and continuing to use Mexican International Labour Organization data.
The following trade-related lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. and three importers filed a joint status report announcing they intend to settle several consolidated cases (see 2108190038) contesting the Commerce Department’s denials of the importers’ Section 233 steel tariff exclusion requests (Valbruna Slater Stainless.v. U.S., CIT #21-00027).
Exporter Oman Fasteners asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 29 to dismiss petitioner Mid Continent Steel & Wire's appeal of a Court of International Trade decision imposing an injunction on the Commerce Department's antidumping duty cash deposits on Oman Fasteners' steel nail imports. The exporter said the injunction is no longer active because the Commerce Department completed the next administrative review of the AD order, so there is no live controvery in the case (Oman Fasteners v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1661).
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 30 said that for drawback purposes the 10-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheadings should be read starting with their directly adjacent text and not the superior indented text. Judge Claire Kelly said the "plain meaning" of the statute governing substituted unused merchandise drawbacks refers to the "words describing the article adjacent to the 10-digit number."
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 31 remanded for a third time the Commerce Department's antidumping investigation on refillable stainless steel kegs from China, rejecting the agency's continued use of a Mexican data set to calculate a surrogate labor costs value for respondent Ningbo Master International Trade. Judge M. Miller Baker said Brazilian wage data already provided by petitioner American Keg was "correct as a factual matter," making Commerce's reopening of the record on remand to seek additional Mexican data unjustified.
The following trade-related lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Rebar Trade Action Coalition, a domestic petitioner and defendant-intervenor in a case recently decided in the Court of International Trade, announced Jan. 26 it will be filing an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. It is seeking to overturn CIT’s holding that Turkish shipbuilding company and scrap metal supplier Nur Gemicilik ve Ticaret isn't a cross-owned input supplier of Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret, a rebar producer and countervailing duty respondent in the Commerce Department’s 2018 investigation of its products (see 2311270059). The decision meant that Commerce didn't have to attribute Nur’s government subsidies to Kaptan, which ultimately received a de minimis duty in the review (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT # 21-00565).
Various importers and exporters are looking to intervene in a suit from solar cell maker Auxin Solar and solar module designer Concept Clean Energy challenging the Commerce Department's pause of antidumping and countervailing duties on solar cells and modules from Southeast Asian countries found to be circumventing the AD/CVD orders on these goods from China (Auxin Solar v. United States, CIT # 23-00274).
A Commerce Department scope ruling on T-series aluminum sheet "would overturn more than 10 years of black-letter law related to scope inquiries," importer Valeo North America told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 26. Filing an opening brief at the appellate court, Valeo said that Commerce bucked the traditional framework for finding if a good is within the scope of an antidumping and countervailing duty order by extending "beyond the express scope language" to rely on improper (k)(1) factors (Valeo North America v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1189).