DOJ on June 21 urged the Court of International Trade to uphold the Commerce Department's calculations of benchmark prices for plywood and veneer, as well as its use of adverse inferences on the use of the Chinese Export Buyer's Credit Program, in a countervailing duty review on multilayered wood flooring from China (Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00210).

The Court of International Trade in a June 23 order denied antidumping duty petitioners' bid for an oral argument in a suit on whether to collapse mandatory respondents Yieh Phui Enterprise Co. and Synn Industrial Co. with one of their affiliates, Prosperity Tieh Enterprise Co. Judge Timothy Stanceu rejected the oral argument request following opposition from Prosperity and Yieh Phui, finding that "oral argument would not assist in the resolution of the issues remaining in this litigation" (Prosperity Tieh Enterprise Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 16-00138).

The Court of International Trade on June 23 upheld the Commerce Department's use of exporter Dillinger Huttenwerke's likely selling price, taken from its books, to value the cost of production of its non-prime merchandise in an antidumping investigation. Judge Leo Gordon said the company's failure to fill the record with actual COP data for the non-prime products in the AD case on steel cut-to-length plate from Germany justified the agency's decision to use the likely selling price as a fill-in.

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's decision not to collapse exporter Prosperity Tieh Enterprise Co. with the already-collapsed entity of Yieh Phui Enterprise Co. and Synn Industrial Co. as part of the antidumping duty investigation into corrosion resistant steel (CORE) products from Taiwan. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the trade court's opinion upholding the collapsing decision, Judge Timothy Stanceu said Commerce properly weighed the evidence to find the evidence was insufficient to show a significant potential for manipulation between Prosperity and Yieh Phui. The decision was made despite members of the same family owning both companies. The result was a 11.04% margin for Prosperity and a de minimis 1.20% margin for the Yieh Phui/Synn entity.

The Commerce Department didn't violate the law by accepting information submitted by antidumping duty respondent Zhejiang Dingli Machinery Co. even though the data was labeled as business proprietary, the government said in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. In the AD investigation on mobile access equipment and subassemblies from China, the U.S. said the information could only have been submitted as business proprietary information, and that the data was merely "supporting documentation for information already on the record" (Coalition of American Manufacturers of Mobile Access Equipment v. U.S., CIT # 22-00152).

CBP illegally classified rough, unworked emerald stones imported by Fine Emeralds, the company argued in a June 22 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The customs agency classified the goods under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 7103.10.40, dutiable at 10.5%, while Fine Emeralds is claiming that the proper home for the emeralds is subheading 7103.10.20, free of duty. Subheading 7103.10.40 provides for precious stones, whether or not worked but not strung, mounted or set, "Other," while subheading 7103.10.20 provides for unworked precious stones. The complaint said that on entry the merchandise was described on the commercial invoice as "rough emeralds," adding that they were neither "simply sawn nor roughly shaped" (Fine Emeralds v. United States, CIT # 20-03928).

The Court of International Trade in a June 22 confidential opinion upheld CBP's finding that a group of companies, led by American Pacific Plywood, evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood from China. In a letter to litigants, Judge M. Miller Baker gave the parties until June 29 to review the bracketed information in the opinion. In the case, BP said the companies evaded the duties by transshipping their products through Cambodia. The plaintiffs levied a host of due process violation allegations against CBP and said, among other things, the agency carried out an "unceasing attempt to crucify" exporter LB Wood Cambodia (see 2202040037) (American Pacific Plywood v. U.S., CIT # 20-03914).

A supermodule for use in hydrogen fuel-cell power plants is a part an electric generator and not a water gas generator, DOJ said in a June 20 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Importer HyAxium's arguments to the contrary do not consider the supermodule in its entirety and the unit does not generate water gas, DOJ said (HyAxium v. U.S., CIT # 21-00057).

The Commerce Department in a June 22 brief requested a partial voluntary remand at the Court of International Trade so it can fix a mistake in its decision to grant a byproduct offset for antidumping duty respondent NTSF Seafoods Joint Stock Co. The agency said it wanted the chance to review the decision after looking at evidence submitted by petitioner Catfish Farmers of America so that it can "reconsider the narrow issue of potential double counting" with regard to byproduct offsets that NTSF received (Catfish Farmers of America v. U.S., CIT # 20-00105).

The Court of International Trade on June 23 upheld Commerce's use of likely selling price instead of actual costs of production to calculate the cost of production of non-prime merchandise, after German exporter Dillinger failed to populate the record with actual COP data for the non-prime goods in an antidumping duty investigation on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from Germany. Judge Leo Gordon also sustained the use of partial adverse facts available on exporter Salzgitter due to its failure to report around 28,000 downstream sales. But the judge remanded the agency's rejection of Dillinger's proposed quality code for sour transport plate as part of the agency's model-match methodology because a previous court opinion rejected that methodology.