Imported glass mosaic tiles from China should have been granted Section 301 tariff exclusions due to their size, said importer Anatolia Tile & Stone in a May 31 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Anatolia is challenging CBP's denial of 42 protests, which sought to remove the 25% duty assigned by CBP at liquidation. The company asked the court to order CBP to reliquidate the entries and refund any excess duties paid with interest (Anatolia Tile & Stone v. U.S., CIT # 21-00245).

The Commerce Department asked the Court of International Trade for a voluntary remand in a countervailing duty case to reconsider its use of an adverse inference against exporter JA Solar Technology Yangzhou Co. related to its alleged use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program since the agency "refined its practice." In its opposition to JA Solar's and Risen Energy Co.'s motion for judgment in a case on an administrative review on solar cells from China, the U.S. said it altered its handling of verifying non-use of the EBCP to only require non-use certifications from all U.S. importers and not all downstream U.S. customers (Risen Energy Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00231).

The Court of International Trade granted exporter Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co.'s motion to sever its case from a suit filed by Nippon Steel challenging the 2019-20 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on hot-rolled steel from Japan, and dismiss its case. Judge Stephen Vaden also granted Tokyo Steel's request to dissolve the injunction suspending liquidation of the company's hot-rolled steel products. The exporter initially filed the case to contest the Commerce Department's deduction of Section 232 steel and aluminum duties from respondent Nippon Steel's U.S. price (Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00180).

The Court of International Trade approved exporter Octal's bid to voluntarily dismiss its suit against the Commerce Department's 2020-21 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on polyethylene terephthalate resin from Oman. Octal launched the suit challenging Commerce's changes to the date of sale for Octal's U.S. sales. The exporter argued the agency should have used the date when the relevant price index was published rather than the invoice date, and the change resulted in an erroneous 3.96% dumping margin for the exporter (Octal Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00352).

CBP misclassified low noise blocks and switches over a series of entries between 2016 and 2018 as "transmission apparatus for radio-broadcasting," rather than as duty-free "telephone sets,' Global Invacom said in a May 30 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Global Invacom Ltd. v. U.S., CIT # 21-00261).

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The Commerce Department decided to use adverse facts available related to antidumping duty respondent Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret's billing adjustments following a Court of International Trade order questioning whether Assan acted to the best of its ability in its remand results submitted to the trade court May 31. The agency also revised the duty drawback adjustment methodology it applied to Assan by dividing the amount of duties exempted by a Turkish duty exemption program during the AD investigation period over the total quantity of exports made under the program to calculate a per-unit drawback adjustment. The result, if sustained, would be a de minimis rate for Assan (Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 21-00246).

The Commerce Department didn't adequately explain its decision to include four types of income categories when calculating the financial ratios for surrogate company Ayes Celikhasir in the antidumping duty investigation on metal lockers from China, the Court of International Trade ruled in a May 30 opinion. Petitioner and plaintiff List Industries said that if these income categories were excluded from the ratio calculation, Ayes would have been revealed not to be a profitable company, barring it from being used as a surrogate.

The Commerce Department correctly reconsidered Nucor’s ministerial error allegations in recalculating antidumping duty rates for Prolamsa and Maquilacero in its remand results on the 2018-19 administrative review on heavy walled rectangular welded steel pipes and tubes from Mexico, Nucor said in May 26 response comments to the remand redetermination at the Court of International Trade (Nucor Tubular Products v. U.S., CIT # 21-00543).

The Court of International Trade should sustain the Commerce Department's fifth remand redetermination on the antidumping duty investigation on certain hardwood plywood products from China, said the government, a group of consolidated plaintiffs, and a defendant-intervenor, in a series of response briefs at the Court of International Trade (Linyi Chengen Import and Export Co., Ltd., et al. v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 18-00002).