Importer Kehoe Component Sales filed a consent motion for the Court of International Trade to set aside the dismissal of its customs case, which was tossed for lack of prosecution after the case wasn't removed from the customs case management calendar prior to the end of the removal period (see 2602030010) (Kehoe Component Sales v. United States, CIT # 22-00187).
The Commerce Department unreasonably applied adverse facts and unlawfully requested audited financial statements or unaudited statements with notes from Hangzhou Evernew Machinery & Equipment Company, the metal locker exporter argued in its memorandum of law filed with the Court of International Trade on Feb. 5 (Hangzhou Evernew Machinery & Equipment Company v. United States, CIT # 25-00151).
On remand in an antidumping duty case, the Commerce Department continued to use a mandatory respondent’s weighted annualized cost data for most of its conversion costs, although it did analyze whether the exporter’s costs for natural gas and electricity specifically should have been averaged on a quarterly basis. It said it had chosen to treat them “as part of the material inputs” of the exporter after the Court of International Trade identified those inputs as “ripe for reconsideration” (Citribel NV v. United States, CIT # 24-00010).
CBP's regulations implementing the U.S.-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement are a "reasonable exercise of CBP's authority to implement the Agreement" and properly dictate the test for qualifying for preferential treatment under the FTA, importer JBF Bahrain argued in a Jan. 29 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. JBF said that despite asking the trade court to "ignore" the regulations and the "commitment the U.S. made to" Bahrain, the government hasn't claimed the regulations are illegal or "in conflict with the statute" (JBF Bahrain v. United States, CIT # 23-00067).
The U.S. is "clearly attempting to deny" importer G&H Diversified Manufacturing "access to facts that would support its claims" in opposing the company's motion for a legal ruling on the propriety of seeking testimony from both CBP and the Bureau of Industry and Security in a case seeking an exclusion from Section 232 tariffs, G&H argued Feb. 2 (G&H Diversified Manufacturing v. United States, CIT # 22-00130).
The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's benchmark for measuring a natural gas subsidy provided by the Russian government in the 2021-22 countervailing duty review of Russian phosphate fertilizers, though the court remanded the benchmark for measuring the CVD rate for the provision of phosphate ore mining rights. Judge Jane Restani held that Commerce adequately explained its decision to use global natural gas prices for the benchmark used to measure the natural gas subsidy, though the judge said the agency failed to explain its benchmark of "phosphate rock exports from countries with igneous ore deposits and comparable [bone phosphate of lime] grades to Russia."
The U.S. dropped its appeal of the Court of International Trade's decision vacating the Commerce Department's duty "pause" on collection of antidumping duties and countervailing duties on solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dismissed the appeal on Feb. 5 upon the government's request, though the issue continues to be litigated in a separate appeal led by the American Clean Power Association (Auxin Solar v. United States, Fed. Cir. #s 25-2120, 26-1072).
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The International Trade Commission properly analyzed whether there was a "reasonable overlap of competition between and among" imports of oil country tubular goods from Argentina, Mexico, Russia and South Korea and the domestic like product, and reasonably decided to cumulate the imports from these countries in its analysis, the U.S. argued (Tenaris Bay City v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 25-2034).
QualiFlex press sleeves -- a key component of papermaking machines -- are properly classified as papermaking machinery parts under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 8439 rather than as "other" articles of plastics and other materials of HTS heading 3926, importer Voith US Inc. argued in a Feb. 3 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Voith US v. United States, CIT # 24-00029).