The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Jan. 27 order dismissed an appeal led by Ellwood City Forge on the Commerce Department's decision to issue a questionnaire in lieu of on-site verification in an antidumping duty investigation. The appellants moved to voluntarily dismiss the action before filing their opening brief at the appellate court. Counsel for Ellwood did not reply to request for comment on the reason for dismissing the case (Ellwood City Forge v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1382).
The U.S. filed appeals against four World Trade Organization dispute panel rulings that found the U.S. Section 232 national security tariffs on steel and aluminum violated global trade rules. The U.S. said during the Jan. 27 meeting of the dispute settlement body it will take the case to the Appellate Body -- the next tier of the WTO's dispute settlement system that stands defunct due to U.S. refusal to seat members on the body over reform concerns.
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Jan. 26 order gave defendant-appellee Mid Continent Steel & Wire until Feb. 22 to file a reply brief over the use of total adverse facts available rates for two non-cooperative respondents. The appellee said it needed the extra time due to "a significant volume of time-sensitive work arising from other cases being handled by" Mid Continent's counsel (PrimeSource Building Products v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2128).
The Commerce Department slashed the dumping margin for exporter Ajmal Steel Tubes & Pipe Industries on remand in an antidumping review after accepting the respondent's answers to Section A of the AD questionnaire. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on Jan. 26, Commerce dropped the dumping margin for Ajmal to 0.57% after using the company's own data as opposed to adverse facts available to calculate the margin. The agency originally rejected the submission after it was submitted late by less than two hours due to COVID-19-related technical difficulties (Ajmal Steel Tubes & Pipes Industries v. United States, CIT # 21-00587).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The International Trade Commission's decision not to cumulate imports from Brazil with imports from Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and the U.K. in a hot-rolled steel injury proceeding violated the law, U.S. steel maker Cleveland-Cliffs argued in a Jan. 25 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The ITC focused on the likely volume of the Brazilian imports in the cumulation analysis, failing to support the decision with substantial evidence and failing to address its departure from its past practice (Cleveland-Cliffs v. United States, CIT #22-00355).
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 24 opinion ordered the Commerce Department to drop to zero a 26.50% estimated subsidy rate for the provision of land to an affiliate of respondent Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited (GFL) that was included in GFL's countervailing duty rate in a CVD investigation. Judge Timothy Stanceu said Commerce should not have included the subsidy because the agency overlooked the type of relationship the regulation requires between subsidies to inputs and the downstream product in the production chain.
Despite concerns from customs brokers that new provisions in CBP’s recent Part 111 final rule could hurt their client relationships, a new reporting requirement for termination of the broker-client relationship should rarely come up, and another provision on record-keeping by brokers when they discover client compliance issues carries with it some silver linings, customs experts said on a Jan. 25 webinar.
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 25 opinion dismissed a case from J.D. Irving on the Commerce Department's cash deposit instructions to CBP after the 2019 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on softwood lumber products from Canada. Judge Timothy Reif said that the court did not have subject matter jurisdiction to hear the case under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction, since jurisdiction would have been available under Section 1581(c), "but for the decision" by parties involved to request a binational panel review of the AD review under USMCA.