The Commerce Department will no longer apply adverse facts available to the antidumping rate for an Indian shrimp exporter, it said in remand results filed May 4 (Calcutta Seafoods Pvt. Ltd. v. U.S., CIT # 19-00201). The filing follows a Feb. 3 Court of International Trade decision which found that Commerce did not aid a small, first-time mandatory respondent to an AD case enough and unlawfully applied AFA to the exporter (see 2102030006). Commerce will now use neutral facts available, leading the agency to drop frozen warmwater shrimp exporter Elque Group's dumping margin to 27.66% from 110.9%.
Court of International Trade activity
The Court of International Trade remanded a trade adjustment assistance case back to the Labor Department after the agency denied a unionized group of former AT&T call center employees the aid. In a May 4 opinion, Judge M. Miller Baker found that Labor failed to discuss or even reference the union's evidence of why the trade adjustment assistance was warranted in its determination, warranting a remand for reconsideration of the agency decision. The former call center employees worked for AT&T at the Kalamazoo, Michigan, call center location and were let go following the telecommunications company's decision to relocate the jobs to Mexico, the Philippines and the Caribbean.
The Court of International Trade issued two decisions related to the application of adverse facts available in antidumping duty proceedings on solar cells from China and cold-rolled steel flat products from South Korea shipped through Vietnam.
The Court of International Trade ruled that the Commerce Department improperly applied adverse facts available to Chinese ribbon exporter Yama Ribbons and Bows Co. in a countervailing duty administrative review. In an April 30 opinion, Judge Timothy Stanceu found that Commerce did not consider record evidence fairly when determining whether Yama received a subsidy from the Export Buyer's Credit Program from the Export-Import Bank of China. Remanding the case, Stanceu also held that Commerce failed again to consider all relevant record evidence in its decision to include subsidy rates to inputs of synthetic yarn and caustic soda in the CVD review.
The Court of International Trade on May 3 granted the Commerce Department’s request to reopen its 2016-17 antidumping duty administrative review on circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea. Commerce had requested remand of the final results because a CIT decision issued in a separate case in December 2020 ruled against the agency’s application of a particular market situation finding under similar circumstances.
The Department of Justice wants an entry of plywood imported from China scratched from a customs challenge in the Court of International Trade by BRAL Corporation, since the importer failed to file a protest against the entry's liquidation (BRAL Corp. v. U.S., CIT # 20-00154). In a May 3 memo in support of a partial motion to dismiss, DOJ said the entry, one of 12 in dispute in the case, was reliquidated twice by CBP as the agency attempted to sort out the antidumping and countervailing duties applicable to the plywood imports. Since BRAL did not protest the second reliquidation, yet challenges it in court anyway, the entry should be dismissed from the case for lack of jurisdiction, DOJ said.
Cannabis processing equipment importer Root Sciences accused the Department of Justice of playing "judicial keep away" with particular customs cases, in an April 30 response to the government's motion to dismiss. Arguing to keep jurisdiction of its case under the Court of International Trade, Root Sciences made the case for why its challenge of the deemed exclusion of a cannabis crude extract recovery machine should remain in the trade court and why DOJ's arguments against that position are disingenuous.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Nearly 600 pages comprise two administrative record indexes, one “non-confidential,” the other “confidential,” filed April 30 with the Court of International Trade by government defendants in the massive Section 301 litigation challenging the lawfulness of the lists 3 and 4A tariffs on Chinese imports. The roughly 3,600+ complaints seek to get the tariffs vacated and the duties refunded, alleging they run afoul of the 1974 Trade Act and violate 1946 Administrative Procedure Act protections against sloppy rulemakings.
Although a court opinion last week cleared the way for exports of 3D-printed guns to be removed from State Department jurisdiction, the guns will continue to be covered under the agency’s U.S. Munitions List until the ruling is made official, the State Department said.