Former Court of International Trade Judge Richard Goldberg of Lake Melissa, North Dakota, died July 18, according to the court. He was 95. Following a stint as assistant state's attorney for Cass County, North Dakota, Goldberg was commissioned into the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General Corps, then worked as an attorney for the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C., before returning to Fargo to run his family's grain business until it was sold to Anheuser-Busch in 1983. Goldberg was elected to the state Senate in North Dakota four times. During the Ronald Reagan administration he served as deputy undersecretary for international affairs and commodity programs in the Department of Agriculture, later becoming undersecretary. President George H.W. Bush appointed him to CIT, where he served for more than three decades. Survivors include his wife, Mary, son, John, and daughter, Julie.

The Commerce Department can use a transaction-specific margin as an adverse facts available rate, the government argued in a July 24 reply brief at the Court of International Trade supporting its motion for reconsideration. While exporter Lumber Liquidators argued that the statute only allows a calculated dumping margin and not one based solely on a single sales transaction, the U.S. said this interpretation cuts against the law's plain language, which says that when Commerce uses AFA, it can use any margin from any segment of the proceeding (Fusong Jinlong Wooden Group Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 19-00144).

The Court of International Trade in a July 25 order dismissed an antidumping suit brought by exporter Okechamp for failure to file a complaint within the time allotted. Okechamp brought the case to contest the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on preserved mushrooms from the Netherlands. The trade court said the case was tossed for lack or prosectuion (Okechamp v. United States, CIT # 23-00134).

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The Commerce Department said that, after reviewing the facts, ship building company Nur Gemicilik ve Tic., an affiliate of countervailing duty respondent Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret, is not a cross-owned input supplier of goods primarily dedicated to the production of downstream products. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on July 24, Commerce changed its tune regarding why the input in question, steel scrap, was mainly dedicated to the production of downstream steel goods as part of the 2018 CVD review on steel concrete rebar from Turkey (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 21-00565).

No lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade.

The Commerce Department illegally picked Germany as the third-country comparison market in the antidumping duty investigation on preserved mushrooms from the Netherlands, U.S. mushroom producer Giorgio Foods argued in a July 21 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Giorgio, the AD petitioner, said that none of the reasons Commerce gave for picking Germany was supported by substantial evidence, leading, in part, to a de minimis rate for respondent Prochamp and the company's exclusion from the AD order (Giorgio Foods v. U.S., CIT # 23-00133).

The Court of International Trade in a July 24 opinion granted the Commerce Department's voluntary remand request to address alleged errors in calculating the antidumping margin as part of the investigation on forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany. Judge Stephen Vaden also sent the case back after finding that Commerce did not express a clear rationale for its refusal to address petitioner Ellwood City Forge Co.'s claims on alternate legal grounds Commerce could have used to make a particular market situation adjustment.

The Court of International Trade on July 21 upheld surrogate value picks for five inputs in an antidumping duty administrative review on activated carbon from China. The five inputs are carbonized material, coal tar, hydrochloric acid, steam and bituminous coal.

Importer PrimeSource Building Products moved for a partial stay of the Court of International Trade's order dismissing its suit challenging President Donald Trump's expansion of Section 232 steel and aluminum duties onto "derivative" products. PrimeSource said it wants the order stayed pending the resolution of its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (Primesource Building Products v. U.S., CIT # 20-00032).