CBP's Office of Regulations and Rulings abused its discretion when it overturned a determination of evasion in an administrative review, the Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee (AEFTC) said in an April 26 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade. The original determination found that Kingtom Aluminio SRL had evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China by transshipment through the Dominican Republic. The AEFTC asked the court to remand the case to CBP (Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee v. U.S., CIT # 22-00236).

The Court of International Trade should refuse to consolidate a challenge to the International Trade Commission's affirmative injury finding on hot-rolled steel flat products from Australia with a challenge to the commission's negative injury determination on the same goods from Brazil, the U.S. argued. The government claimed that there are no overlapping issues in the proceedings and that "consolidation would complicate briefing as well as the Court's review of the determinations." The Australia and Brazil cases challenge different determinations, so the present dispute is not the same as respondents and petitioners making opposing arguments on the same Commerce Department dumping margin, the U.S. said. The government was joined in its opposition to consolidation by U.S. steel companies Cleveland-Cliffs, Nucor Corp., Steel Dynamics, SSAB Enterprises and U.S. Steel Corp. (BlueScope Steel v. United States, CIT # 22-00353).

The Commerce Department reasonably declined to investigate alleged off-peak sales of electricity and correctly decided not to treat an affiliate as a cross-owned input supplier in a countervailing duty investigation on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from South Korea, DOJ argued April 24 at the Court of International Trade (Nucor v. U.S., CIT # 21-00182).

Commerce's adjustment to the total manufacturing cost and scrap offsets in an antidumping duty administrative review on steel pipes and tubes from Korea cannot be argued at the Court of International Trade, defendant-intervenor Nucor Tubular Products said in an April 24 motion to dismiss two claims in HiSteel's complaint. Nucor argued that even if HiSteel is correct, the alleged calculation errors could not have affected the dumping margin, and so HiSteel has failed to allege any actual injury and the claims are not subject to the court's jurisdiction (HiSteel Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00142).

The Court of International Trade in a confidential opinion upheld CBP's determination of non-evasion made on remand in a case over the Enforce and Protect Act investigation on frozen warmwater shrimp from India. Judge Claire Kelly gave the parties until May 3 to review the opinion's confidential information. The trade court previously remanded the non-evasion finding due to CBP's failure to provide adequate public summaries of the confidential information in the proceeding. On remand, CBP said it received adequate public summaries from all the parties for all the confidential data (see 2211220055) (Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Enforcement Committee v. U.S., CIT # 21-00129).

The Commerce Department did not adequately explain its finding that ship building company Nur Gemicilik ve Tic, an affiliate of countervailing duty respondent Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret, was a cross-owned input supplier of primarily dedicated inputs, the Court of International Trade ruled. Sending back the 2018 administrative review of the CVD order on rebar from Turkey, Judge Gary Katzmann said Commerce erroneously relied on prior segments of the review and a past CIT decision to say that "scrap" is an input primarily dedicated to the production of downstream steel products.

The Commerce Department legally relied on respondents Allied Natural Product's and Ambrosia Natural Products (India)'s raw honey acquisition costs as a proxy to calculate cost of production in the antidumping duty investigation into raw honey from India, the respondents argued in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Issuing the brief as a supplement to the government's claims, Allied and Ambrosia added that, contrary to petitioner American Honey Producers Association's claims, Commerce did not use the beekepeers' and "middlemen" suppliers' costs as "benchmarks" for setting the cost of honey (American Honey Producers Association v. U.S., CIT # 22-00195).

The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's use of total facts otherwise available with an adverse inference on remand in an antidumping duty case concerning wooden cabinets and vanities from China, according to an April 24 opinion. Judge Miller Baker upheld Commerce's use of AFA and its selection of the 262.18% China-wide rate for Dalian Meisen.

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The Court of International Trade remanded the Commerce Department's 2018 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on rebar from Turkey. Judge Gary Katzmann said that, with respect to Commerce's attribution to respondent Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret of subsidies received by affiliated ship building company Nur Gemicilik ve Tic, the agency didn't adequately explain its finding Nur was a cross-owned input supplier of primarily dedicated inputs. Commerce erroneously said that since it previously found that "scrap" is an input primarily dedicated to the production of downstream steel products, "it is a matter of routine." Katzmann ruled this prior decision was fact-specific and not applicable to the present case.