The U.S. on Sept. 23 told the Court of International Trade an exporter "confuses statutory schemes" when it claims that past negative antidumping and countervailing duty determinations shield against anti-circumvention findings on the same goods from the same countries. Defending the Commerce Department's circumvention findings of the AD/CVD orders on circular welded carbon quality steel pipes and tubes from China, India and South Korea, the government said exporter SeAH Steel Vina Corp. conflated the criteria for AD/CVD investigations with those for circumvention inquiries (SeAH Steel Vina Corp. v. United States, CIT Consol # 23-00256).
A German exporter of steel used to transport corrosive materials responded Sept. 20 at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to a U.S. claim that the Commerce Department's decision to calculate certain of the exporter’s production costs for a review using the items' sales values was rational because the figures “came from Dillinger’s own books and records” (AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1498).
In a 131-page brief before the Court of International Trade, the U.S. responded Sept. 20 to claims by plaintiffs that its circumvention finding regarding Vietnamese hardwood plywood was flawed. It said again that the Commerce Department’s decision to not pick a mandatory respondent was fair and that adverse facts available had been correctly applied to 20 exporters (Shelter Forest International Acquisition v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 23-00144).
The U.S. agreed to refund Section 232 duties that exporter ArcelorMittal Long Products Canada paid on its steel bars and rod imports, the parties said in a Sept. 20 stipulated judgment submitted to the Court of International Trade. The parties said the 47 entries at issue across seven cases brought by the company qualify for exclusion to the duties granted by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (ArcelorMittal Long Products Canada v. United States, CIT # 21-00038).
The U.S. on Sept. 20 defended its decision on remand to not apply partial adverse facts available against exporter Garg Tube, claiming that the exporter was "fully cooperative," having made multiple attempts to get cost information from an unaffiliated supplier. The government said Commerce couldn't find enough evidence to show that the potential leverage Garg Tube could exert over the supplier supports the use of AFA (Garg Tube Export v. U.S., CIT # 21-00169).
The Court of International Trade granted Sept. 20 an importer’s consent motion to stay for 180 days proceedings brought against it by the U.S. The importer said in its motion, filed Sept. 18, that the parties were working to settle the case, which alleges the importer dodged antidumping duties on tapered roller bearings by misclassifying its entries (United States v. Wanxiang America Corp., CIT # 22-00205).
The Court of International Trade held oral argument Sept. 19 in a case alleging that CBP wrongly detained an entry of weight loss dietary supplements for almost a year (Unichem Enterprises v. U.S., CIT # 24-00033).
An importer of weekly/monthly planners told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Sept. 18 that it and the government were in agreement that the Court of International Trade had committed a reversible error by classifying its planners as diaries (Blue Sky The Color of Imagination v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1710).
Importer Nutricia North America told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Sept. 18 that the government's claims in a customs suit on the company's medical foods present "several fundamental flaws." Nutricia argued that, despite the government's claim that the products are barred from Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 3004 due to Note 1(a) to chapter 30, the medical foods "easily fall within the terms of heading 3004 as 'medicaments ... for therapeutic uses'" (Nutricia North America v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1436).