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).
The trade court must remand the Commerce Department’s determination that ceramic tile from India was neither dumped nor subsidized, because Commerce wrongly failed to collapse or find affiliation for multiple respondents, a petitioner said in a Nov. 17 motion for judgment (Coalition for Fair Trade in Ceramic Tile v. United States, CIT # 25-00095).
The Commerce Department reasonably decided not to attribute subsidies provided to Nur Gemicilik, an affiliated input supplier of countervailing duty respondent Kaptan Demir, to Kaptan itself in the 2018 CVD review on Turkish rebar, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Nov. 17. Judges Raymond Chen, Richard Linn and Todd Hughes said Commerce properly identified that the unprocessed steel scrap Nur provided Kaptan was a "common input" and that the agency didn't place undue weight on consideration of Nur's main business activity.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Nov. 17 held that five types of medical foods imported by Nutricia North America are properly classified as "medicaments" and not as "food preparations." Judges Sharon Prost, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark overruled the Court of International Trade's decision, which came to the opposite conclusion, finding that Nutricia's products are properly found to be medicaments under duty-free Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 3004.50.5040.
In a Nov. 11 motion for judgment, a wind tower petitioner said that the Commerce Department’s administrative review of the antidumping duty order on South Korean utility-scale wind towers wrongly failed to adjust a respondent’s conversion costs and erred in constructing the respondent’s value using, in part, information dating back to when that respondent wasn’t profitable (Wind Tower Trade Coalition v. United States, CIT # 25-00104).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
In another new injury determination on remand, the International Trade Commission again “either ignores or glosses over” rainy conditions during the investigation period and evidence that domestic phosphate fertilizer producers refused to sell to certain U.S. customers, telling customers to import the product instead, exporters led by Eurochem and Phosagro said on Nov. 7 (OCP S.A. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 21-00219).
In a reply to Korean steel exporter Hyundai, steel petitioner Nucor Corp. said Oct. 24 that the Commerce Department, again, was right to base its determination of the de facto specificity of South Korea’s discounted off-peak electricity prices on the fact that three unrelated industries received a large portion of the subsidy (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00190).
Various members of the trade bar speculated that the president's tariff authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act may face serious limits once the Supreme Court issues a decision in the lead cases on President Donald Trump's IEEPA tariffs. Following a Nov. 5 oral argument in which many of the justices appeared skeptical of Trump's sweeping use of the IEEPA to impose tariffs, many lawyers have said change may be coming in the world of trade.
Importer Lanxess argued again Oct. 31 that its polymerization accelerator -- a substance used to accelerate the chemical process of plastic manufacturing -- is properly classified as a “supported catalyst,” not as a chemical preparation (Lanxess Corporation v. United States, CIT # 23-00073).