The Commerce Department rightly made the switch to neutral facts available from adverse facts available in an antidumping review, following a previous Court of International Trade decision that found Commerce failed to adequately give assistance to a small, first-time respondent, CIT said in a Sept. 20 decision.
The Court of International Trade rejected an importer's bid for reconsideration of its challenge of the countervailing duty rate assessed on its tire imports. The court found for the second time that the importer lacked proper jurisdiction due to an untimely filed protest of a liquidation decision. “The lesson is both clear and stark: Don’t sit on your rights,” Judge Stephen Alexander Vaden said.
An anti-circumvention inquiry requested by a U.S. industry coalition amounts to an attempt to impose new antidumping and countervailing duties on solar cells from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam without the strictures of real AD/CVD investigations, rather than serving as valid allegations of circumvention of Chinese solar cells duties, two U.S. importers said in a brief filed Sept. 15 asking the Commerce Department not to initiate the inquiries.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Importer Triumph Engine Control Systems filed a Sept. 16 consent motion at the Court of International Trade to designate a tariff classification challenge on circuit card assemblies as a test case for four other of its lawsuits. Triumph believes the proper Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading is 9032, while CBP says 8538 is the correct subheading for the assemblies. The other four cases -- CIT #19-00108, 19-00109, 19-00110 and 19-00130 -- deal with "merchandise and legal issues that are substantially identical," to those in the proposed test case, the motion said. The Justice Department consented to the test case motion (Triumph Engine Control Systems, LLC v. United States, CIT #19-00094).
The Court of International Trade denied importer Strategic Import Supply's motion for a reconsideration of its case over the proper countervailing duty rate for its tire imports in a Sept. 20 order. Finding that Strategic Import Supply didn't file a timely protest of CBP's decision to liquidate the imports of passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China, Judge Stephen Vaden again dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction. Strategic Import Supply sought reconsideration after CBP granted a nearly identical protest to the one subject to Vaden's previous dismissal.
The Commerce Department released a final rule making extensive changes to its antidumping and countervailing duty regulations, including on scope and anti-circumvention inquiries. Currently scheduled for publication Sept. 20, the final rule is intended to “strengthen the administration and enforcement of AD/CVD laws, make such administration and enforcement more efficient, and to create new enforcement tools for Commerce to address circumvention and evasion of trade remedies.”
The Biden administration is likely to increase export controls and sanctions enforcement in the next few years, Gibson Dunn lawyers said during a webinar this week. They also said the administration is likely to pursue enforcement in creative ways, including sometimes through disclosures with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. and two respondents in an antidumping duty review backed the Commerce Department's decision to drop a particular market situation determination on South Korean steel, in recently filed briefs, arguing the agency relied on what evidence it had after the Court of International Trade ruled against evidence upon which it had originally relied to make the finding (SeAH Steel Co., et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #19-00086).