The Commerce Department erred in calculating the non-selected rate in a quartz surface products antidumping duty review, AD petitioner Cambria Co. argued in a Feb. 10 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Cambria seeks to have Commerce return to a simple average rate calculated based on zero and adverse facts available rates in the preliminary results of the review, instead of the 3.19% mark from the final results that was taken from the all-others rate in the original AD investigation (Cambria Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00007).

The Commerce Department must reconsider its benefit determination on the South Korean government's provision of port usage rights to countervailing duty respondent Hyundai Steel Co., the Court of International Trade held in a Feb. 10 opinion. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said that Commerce failed to consider information relating to prevailing market conditions, such as price, quality and other conditions of the purchase or sale, when deciding whether a benefit was conferred. Choe-Groves also granted Commerce's voluntary remand request on sewerage usage fees after it said it learned more about the program.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Feb. 8 order allowed the U.S. to change its primary counsel in an antidumping duty case. The government moved to go with Margaret Jantzen instead of Mollie Finnan after Finnan became unavailable for oral argument in the proceeding (Carbon Activated Tianjin, et al. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-1298).

Antidumping duty petitioner Mid Continent Steel & Wire in a Feb. 9 brief opposed plaintiff Oman Fasteners' bid for leave to fix mistakes in its recent motion to take judicial notice. Mid Continent said the trade court should refuse to give Oman Fasteners "another bite at the apple" to fix the mistakes in the brief, noting that this is the "second time in less than a month" that the exporter has asked the trade court for permission to address problems in one of its filings (Oman Fasteners v. U.S., CIT # 22-00348).

The Commerce Department erred when it rejected extension requests and imposed adverse facts available in its 2019-2021 antidumping duty administrative review on quartz surface products from India, three affiliated Indian producers said in a Feb. 8 complaint to the Court of International Trade (Antique Marbonite v. U.S., CIT # 23-00030).

Meyer Corp.'s imports of cookware do not qualify for first-sale treatment, the Court of International Trade held in a Feb. 9 opinion. After ruling against Meyer's bid for a retrial in the opinion, Judge Thomas Aquilino said that, because the court doesn't know the extent to which parent company Meyer Holdings had the ability to influence the price paid for the goods sold between affiliates, due to the company's failure to submit its financial information, the use of first sale was not supported.

The Commerce Department failed to explain how its policy of presuming that exporters from non-market economies (NMEs) are controlled by the state and thus deserving of a single NME-wide antidumping rate is rooted in either the statute or Commerce's regulations, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Feb. 9 opinion. Remanding the case over questions on the policy's legal origins for a second time, Judge Richard Eaton also called into question how the NME presumption policy weighs against Commerce's legal obligation to calculate an individual rate for a mandatory respondent using its own data.

The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 10 opinion sent back the Commerce Department's final results in the 2018 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on hot-rolled steel flat products from South Korea. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves remanded the case for Commerce to consider information relating to the prevailing market conditions, such as price, quality and other conditions of purchase or sale, when determining whether a benefit was conferred to respondent Hyundai Steel from the South Korea's government provision of port usage rights. Choe-Groves also granted Commerce's voluntary remand request over sewerage usage fees after it said it learned more about the program.

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The Commerce Department's remand results in a countervailing duty case brought by Nucor Corp. should not be considered in a separate CVD case led by Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret, the U.S. argued in a Feb. 8 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. For starters, the remand results -- which saw Commerce decide not to treat a CVD respondent's supplier as a cross-owned input supplier -- have not been sustained, but even if they were, the trade court is not bound by judgments of other CIT judges, the government said. Also, the analysis in the Nucor case deals with particular companies and is specific to that case (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT # 21-00565).