Steel plate exporters Hyundai Steel and Dongkuk Steel Mill filed a pair of reply briefs at the Court of International Trade on Nov. 20, contesting the Commerce Department's de facto specificity regarding South Korea's discounted off-peak electricity prices in the 2022 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on cut-to-length carbon-quality steel plate from South Korea. Both companies contested Commerce's grouping of three unrelated industries to find that the steel industry received a disproportionate amount of the subsidy (Hyundai Steel v. United States, CIT Consol. # 24-00190).
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
Importer USP Holdings on Nov. 20 voluntarily dismissed its case at the Court of International Trade regarding the applicability of Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusions. USP brought its case last month to contest CBP's denial of its protest claiming its steel entries were improperly denied Section 232 exclusions. Scott Johnston, counsel for USP, said in an email that the company ultimately received relief administratively after CBP agreed to void the denials. However, the case was initially filed, since the relief "came right at/after the 180-day period to challenge the Protest denials in the CIT." (USP Holdings v. United States, CIT # 25-00227).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Nov. 20 scheduled a case concerning deemed liquidation of duty drawback claims for oral argument on Jan. 8 (Performance Additives v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-2059).
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on thermal paper from Germany after the parties challenging the proceeding withdrew their challenge following the trade court's decision last month in Domtar v. U.S.
Antidumping duty petitioner American Paper Plate Coalition on Nov. 20 pushed back against respondent Fuzhou Hengli Paper's bid to add an "Excel datafile" to the record in the respondent's case against the AD investigation on paper plates from China on the basis that the document was never properly presented to the Commerce Department in the investigation (Fuzhou Hengli Paper v. United States, CIT # 25-00064).
Status reports from the government regarding the resumption of litigation have poured in to the Court of International Trade following the reopening of the federal government. Many cases were stayed by the trade court pending the lapse in federal appropriations, given that many DOJ attorneys weren't being paid and were barred from working during the shutdown.
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
Petitioner Wheatland Tube Company opposed Nov. 17 the Commerce Department’s redetermination on remand in an antidumping duty scope case on dual-stenciled pipe, saying that the “entire house of cards on which the Remand Order was built has now collapsed” since the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a Court of International Trade ruling on another suit (Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Company v. United States, CIT # 21-00049).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Nov. 19 affirmed the Court of International Trade's dismissal of Nebraska man Byungmin Chae's second case on one question in the April 2018 customs broker license exam. Judges Timothy Dyk, Jimmie Reyna and Kara Stoll agreed with the trade court that the case should be dismissed "on the basis of claim preclusion."