Vesuvius USA Corp. was rebuffed in an attempt to participate in a legal challenge to the AD duty order effective September 20, 2010 on certain magnesia bricks from Mexico and China. Vesuvius had earlier filed an appearance as a voluntary respondent, then withdrew from participation in the investigation. The court ruled the company had no standing, since by not participating in the investigation it had failed to exhaust its administrative remedies. The court further noted that merely filing an entry of appearance and an administrative protective order (the latter serves to protect the confidentiality of business information of participants in investigations and reviews) does not constitute participation sufficient to grant standing. (Note that there is also a companion CV duty order.) (Slip Op. 11-12, dated 01/31/11)

Following the final results of the January-December 2006 countervailing duty administrative review of certain hot-rolled carbon steel flat products from India, the Court of International Trade instructed the International Trade Administration, among other remand orders, to reassess its determination that Essar Steel Ltd. had benefited from a Chhattisgarh State Industrial Policy since, in other review periods, the agency had found the policy did not benefit the company. For its remand redetermination, the ITA changed its conclusion, finding no benefit. Domestic manufacturers challenged the redetermination, but the court upheld the ITA’s altered position. (See ITT’s Online Archives or 01/01/10 news, 10010550, for BP summary of the decision that remanded the issue to ITA.) (Slip Op. 11-11, dated 01/28/11)

After the preliminary results in the June 2006 -- May 2007 AD administrative review of tapered roller bearings and parts thereof from China, the International Trade Administration altered its methodology for valuing imports manufactured by Peer Bearing Company-Changshan, and, applying “facts otherwise available” for certain missing raw material values (without an adverse inference since the company was cooperative), assigned the firm an AD duty rate of 92.94% for the final results, up from 59.41% in the preliminary results. In response to the Chinese producer’s challenge of these results, the Court of International Trade ordered the ITA to determine anew the appropriate raw material values and pricing methodology. (Slip Op. 11-10, dated 01/25/11)

Following a remand of the results of the AD review of frozen warmwater shrimp from Thailand for the period February 2007 through January 31, 2008, Thai producer/exporters renewed a challenge to the ITA’s use of data obtained from U.S. Customs and Border Protection for purposes of selecting respondents. The court ruled that the use of the data is not arbitrary, is a reasonable application of the AD statute; and is supported by substantial evidence on the record.

Following the AD administrative review of ball bearings¹ from Japan for the period May 1994 through April 1995, liquidation was enjoined for several years because FYH Bearing Unit Inc., an importer of bearings made by Nippon Pillow Block Sales Co., Ltd., gained an injunction against liquidation, and subsequently domestic manufacturer Torrington Co. also was granted an injunction, for all entries in the period.

In Trumpf Medical Systems, Inc. v. U.S., the Court of International Trade granted in part Trumpf’s claims and ordered that U.S. Customs and Border Protection reliquidate entries of certain imported surgical light systems under HTS subheading 9018.19.95, as other electro-medical instruments, at a rate of duty-free. CIT also ordered the reliquidation of certain related light system components.

In an investigation of light-weight thermal paper (LWTP) from Germany, the International Trade Commission determined that imports from Germany of 48 gram-per-square meter LWTP threatened the domestic industry with material injury even though the ITA, in its parallel price investigation, found that the 48 GSM size roll was not being dumped (the ITA calculated an average dumping margin of 6.5% across all roll sizes). The CAFC ruled that the ITC erred in denying a request by the German exporter Papierfabrik August Koehler AG to consider the dumping margins calculated by ITA for its various sizes of LWTP rolls, since the ITC’s threat determination did not align with sales and import volume trends in the various roll-size categories. The court remanded the case to the Court of International Trade for return to the ITC. (Appeal Number 2010-1147, dated January 11, 2011)

In the May 2005--April 2006 AD review of ball bearings from Germany, for the first time under that order the ITA based an exporter’s constructed value¹ on cost data from unaffiliated third parties who had supplied some of the exporter’s finished product, rather than on the prices paid by the exporter to the third party suppliers. As well as challenging the ITA’s use of zeroing^2, SKF GmbH challenged the new CV method, arguing 1) that the change was unexplained; 2) that as a respondent it unfairly risked adverse rates since it could not compel the unrelated party to submit costs data and finally; 3) that it could not be sure to avoid dumping since it did not know the costs incurred by the third party supplier, who is also a competitor in the home market. The appeals court dismissed the zeroing challenge and confirmed that the ITA may use third-party production cost data (it does so in other AD orders), but also ruled that the ITA must provide explanations to address SKF’s other concerns. (See ITT’s Online Archives or 9/02/10 news, 10090215, for BP summary of latest AD duty rates for ball bearings.) (Appeal Number 2010-1128, dated January 7, 2011)

Following the August 2005 -- July 2006 AD administrative review of certain corrosion-resistant carbon steel flat products (“CORE products”) from Korea, the Court of International Trade granted the ITA’s voluntary remand to reconsider its model-matching method for comparing U.S. sales to home market sales. In its remand determination, the ITA decided not to revise its method, but the court ruled that comparing U.S. sales of painted CORE products to home market sales of both painted and laminated products violated the statutory requirement of comparing products “identical in physical characteristics,” and remanded the case back to the ITA again. (CIT Slip Op. 11-3, decided January 11, 2011)

iScholar, Inc., an American importer affected by an adverse AD duty rate in the September 2007 - August 2008 AD review of certain lined paper products from India, brought suit against the ITA for its determination that an uncooperative Indian mandatory respondent merited an adverse rate of 72.03%, selected from among the individual transactions of the other mandatory respondent (whose overall rate was only 1.34%). Because Blue Bird (India) Ltd. ceased responding to the agency’s questionnaires in mid-review and the rate chosen by the ITA was based on a sale “within the mainstream” of the cooperating respondent’s sales, the Court of International Trade upheld the agency’s determination. (CIT Slip Op. 11-4, dated January 13, 2011)