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.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade should uphold CBP's finding that importers Ikadan System USA and Weihai Gaosai Metal Product Co. evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on steel grating from China, defendant-intervenor Hog Slat argued in a Jan. 20 reply brief at CIT. The trade court must reject the plaintiff's arguments that their tribar flooring imports are not under the scope of the orders since CBP's covered merchandise finding "reflected the typical analysis undertaken by Commerce with respect to questions of scope which, although not required of CBP, demonstrates the analytical reasonableness of CBP's approach," the brief said (Ikadan System USA v. United States, CIT #21-00592).
Counterweights for mini excavators should be subject to Section 301 tariffs because they qualify as parts for "backhoes," the government argued in a Jan. 23 brief at the Court of International Trade. DOJ asked the court to deny plaintiff Norca Engineered Products' Nov. 3 motion for summary judgment and to find that the counterweights are backhoe parts and therefore not subject to a Section 301 exclusion (Norca Engineered Products v. U.S., CIT #21-00305).
The Court of International Trade in a confidential Jan. 24 opinion upheld CBP's evasion finding in an Enforce and Protect Act case brought by Leco Supply. In a letter accompanying the decision, Judge Mark Barnett gave the parties until Jan. 31 to review the confidential information in the opinion (Leco Supply v. United States, CIT # 21-00136).
The Court of International Trade should reconsider its decision to send back the Commerce Department's adverse facts available rate for antidumping duty respondent Sino-Maple, the U.S. argued in a Jan. 23 brief. The decision is based on an "incorrect interpretation of" the statute, and the parties never presented the issue of whether the statute, 19 U.S.C. Section 1677e(d), lets Commerce use a transaction-specific margin as an adverse rate, the government claimed (Fusong Jinlong Wooden Group v. U.S., CIT # 19-00144).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 20 order dismissed a case on the 2020-21 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on activated carbon from China. Commerce originally tapped two mandatory respondents in the review, selecting Datong Juqiang Activated Carbon and Jilin Bright Future Chemicals. The agency gave Datong Juqing a zero percent dumping rate while assigning Jilin Bright a $0.62 per kilogram dumping margin. The agency then assigned separate rate respondents the same $0.62/kg rate it gave to Jilin Bright (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co., et al. v. United States, CIT #22-00335).