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 Court of International Trade granted the Department of Justice's motion for extension of the time of service in a penalty action against Kevin Ho, the owner and director of importer Atria, in a Sept. 14 order. After being briefed by both Ho and DOJ, Judge Timothy Reif also decided not to quash service even though the U.S. served Ho's counsel with the wrong summons and complaint (United States v. Chu-Chiang “Kevin” Ho, et al., CIT #19-00038).
The Court of International Trade on Sept. 14 struck down two Commerce Department scope rulings that found door thresholds are not finished products and therefore within the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China. Judge Timothy Stanceu said that Commerce's contention that the door thresholds from Worldwide Door Components and Columbia Aluminum Products were not finished products is contradicted by record evidence, remanding the rulings to the agency for reconsideration.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Sept. 14 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Sept. 6-12:
The Department of Justice in a Sept. 13 filing sought Court of International Trade approval of the Commerce Department's remand results stemming from the 2016-17 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea (see 2106220064), which dropped a cost-based particular market situation adjustment from the sales-below-cost test. However, DOJ did note that Commerce filed its remand results under respectful protest, continuing to find a particular market situation exists in South Korea. Following elimination of the PMS adjustment, Husteel, one of the plaintiffs in the case, received a 6.44% dumping rate, down from 10.91%, while Hyundai, the other plaintiff, received a 4.82% rate, down from 8.14%. Hyundai agreed with the remand results as well in an Aug. 25 filing (see 2108260026), citing that no parties submitted comments opposing the remand results (Husteel Co., Ltd. v. U.S., CIT #19-00107).
Five steel companies filed an amicus brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in support of a full court rehearing in a critical case on presidential power regarding the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs. The brief, filed Sept. 7 by Oman Fasteners, Huttig Building Products, Koki Holdings America, J. Conrad and Metropolitan Staple, was accepted by the appellate court Sept. 9. The five companies tap into the dissenting opinion at the Federal Circuit along with the Court of International Trade's original ruling to make the case that the appellate court erred in finding that the president could hike the Section 232 duties on Turkish goods well beyond procedural time limits (Transpacific Steel LLC, et al. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #20-2157).