The Commerce Department's surrogate value picks for inputs of activated carbon violated the law, exporter Jilin Bright Future Chemicals Co. argued in a Jan. 6 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Commerce further erred by deducting VAT amounts from Jilin Bright's export price and in its valuation of the overhead; selling, general and administrative expenses; and profit components of normal value by calculating surrogate financial ratios with data from Tan Meng Keong and Century Chemical Works, the exporter said (Jilin Bright Future Chemicals Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00336).

CBP illegally failed to refund excess antidumping duty cash deposits totaling over $490,000, importer Marubeni-Itochu Steel America argued in a Jan. 5 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it failed to suspend liquidation of the entries, hold the cash deposits in suspense and issue a prompt refund, the importer claimed (Marubeni-Itochu Steel America v. United States, CIT # 23-00004).

The Supreme Court of the U.S. in a Jan. 5 order gave the government more time to respond to a petition in a broad challenge to President Donald Trump's Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs. The U.S. now has until Feb. 21 to respond after arguing that it needed additional time due to the "heavy press of earlier assigned cases to the attorneys handling this matter" (USP Holdings v. United States, U.S.S.C. #22-0565)

The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 4 order dismissed a customs case from importer Spartan Tools. The company brought the case looking to recover Section 301 duties it paid on its machinery part imports entered under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheadings 8412.29.8015, 8479.90.9496, 8483.30.8090 and 8483.50.9040, for which the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative granted an exclusion. The case was tossed for lack of prosecution since it was placed in the customs case management calendar and not removed "at the expiration of the applicable period of time of removal," the trade court said (Spartan Tools v. United States, CIT #20-03903).

The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 5 text-only order denied the antidumping petitioner Mid Continent Steel & Wire's motion to extend time to file opposition to plaintiff Oman Fastener's bid for a preliminary injunction against cash deposit requirements. Oman Fasteners on Jan. 4 filed its opposition to the time extension request, telling the trade court that "because the continued existence of Oman Fasteners hangs precariously in the balance, and because the ten-day extension proposed by Mid Continent would compound Oman Fasteners’ substantial ongoing irreparable harm, this is that rare case" requiring the extension bid to be denied (Oman Fasteners v. United States, CIT #22-00348).

The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 20 opinion made public Jan. 4 upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a case involving the 2017-18 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on solar cells from China. In its remand results, Commerce changed how it determined surrogate values for silver paste, a solar cell input, while revising its use of adverse facts available, choosing to use partial neutral facts available. The agency stuck by its positions, however, on which surrogate values to use for backsheet and ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA). Judge Claire Kelly found these positions to be reasonable.

The Commerce Department properly found that it had enough industry support to kick off the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations into quartz surface products from India, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held in a Jan. 5 opinion. Upholding the Court of International Trade's ruling, Judges Kimberly Moore, Alan Lourie and Sharon Prost ruled that Commerce permissibly found that the term "producer" did not include quartz surface product fabricators and that the agency backed its finding that fabricators are not producers with substantial evidence via its six-factor production-related activities test.

Two recent Court of International Trade decisions are relevant to a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case over whether the Commerce Department properly refused to apply the finished goods exclusion to certain solar panel mounts, plaintiff-appellants China Custom Manufacturing and Greentec Engineering said in a Jan. 3 notice of supplemental authority. The CIT decisions, Columbia Aluminum Products v. U.S. and Worldwide Door Components v. U.S., excluded door threshold assemblies with aluminum extrusions from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China as finished merchandise. The appellants said the decisions addressed arguments made in the present appeal (China Custom Manufacturing v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-1345).

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The Commerce Department properly tapped India as the primary surrogate country in an antidumping duty review on frozen fish filets from Vietnam, the U.S. argued in a Jan. 3 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Responding to arguments from Catfish Farmers of America vying for Indonesia to be the primary surrogate country, the government said that these claims do not undermine the choice of India and at most just seek to include Indonesia in the list of countries under consideration for the primary surrogate country (Catfish Farmers of America, et al. v. United States, CIT # 20-00105).