In response to a petitioner’s claim that the Commerce Department was required to conduct a de facto specificity analysis on a German subsidy after finding that subsidy was not de jure specific, the U.S. said that such an analysis would "likely be futile” (BGH Edelstahl Siegen GmbH v. U.S., CIT # 21-00080).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
A xanthan gum domestic producer said in an April 8 complaint that an antidumping duty petitioner hadn’t proved it was actually an “interested party,” but that the Commerce Department had let it participate in an administrative review anyway (CP Kelco U.S., Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00059).
Chinese exporter Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to "re-visit and question" the Commerce Department's basis for its non-market economy policy in antidumping duty proceedings. The exporter noted that the policy "has reigned for over twenty years without serious legal challenge," arguing that the appellate court has never directly reckoned with the policy's legality and that it's "high time" for such a review (Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2245).
In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the U.S. and defendant-appellee petitioners fought back against an importer’s opening brief that argued a Commerce Department scope ruling “would overturn more than 10 years of black-letter law” (Valeo North America v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1189).
The Court of International Trade on April 8 referred LE Commodities' challenge to 14 denied requests for exclusions from Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs to mediation before Judge Leo Gordon. The order was penned by Judge M. Miller Baker, who gave the parties until July 8 to complete the mediation, unless Gordon "recommends an extension" (LE Commodities v. United States, CIT # 22-00245).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit asked appellants to explain why they shouldn’t remand a case regarding the ambiguity of the term “butt-weld” in an antidumping duty order on butt-weld pipe fittings from China. They said that if the term is not ambiguous because industry practice defines it, as the appellants claim, then what the industry practice actually entails is a factual question that must be decided by the Commerce Department (Vandewater International v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1093).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 4 sustained the Commerce Department's decision that Australian exporter BlueScope Steel (AIS) didn't reimburse its affiliated U.S. importer, BlueScope Steel Americas, for antidumping duties. Judges Kimberly Moore, Todd Hughes and Leonard Stark echoed the Court of International Trade in finding that it would have been "unreasonable" for the exporter to include the AD in the price charged to the importer because the "exporter itself was not responsible for those duties."
The U.S. on March 25 supported the Commerce Department’s voluntary remand results that used an Italian steel exporter’s quarterly costs methodology to calculate its steel’s value and assigned the exporter a de minimis rate (Officine Tecnosider SRL v. U.S., CIT # 23-00001).