Japanese exporter Nagase & Co.'s antidumping duty case is an "excellent candidate for resolution via mediation," it told the Court of International Trade in a March 4 motion. Nagase's challenges the Commerce Department's calculation of its cost of production and an alleged error in the assessment rate in Commerce's liquidation instructions to CBP under the court's "residual" jurisdiction (Nagase & Co. v. United States, CIT #21-00574).

The Court of International Trade erred when it found that importer Strategic Import Supply's protests were untimely filed, the tire importer said in its March 4 opening argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In fact, SIS should not have had to file the protest in the first place, since the U.S. should have provided the necessary refunds for overpaid countervailing duties without any other filings from SIS, the company said. The result of the trade court's ruling is a practice both "nonsensical" and unsupported by the statute's language (Acquisition 362, LLC dba Strategic Import Supply v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1161).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate in an antidumping duty case after ruling that the Commerce Department can calculate the separate rate respondent's dumping margin by averaging an adverse facts available rate and a de minimis rate. The case concerns the seventh administrative review of the ADD order on diamond sawblades from China. In the review, Commerce tapped Jiangsu Fengtai Single Entity and Chengdu Huifeng New Material as the mandatory respondents, handing them an AFA China-wide 82.05% rate and zero percent rate, respectively, then assigned an average of those two rates to the separate rate respondents (Bosun Tools Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-1929, -1930).

The Court of International Trade shouldn't dismiss a lawsuit brought by MS Solar over the Commerce Department's liquidation instructions issued following an antidumping duty administrative review, MS Solar said in a March 2 brief. The court has repeatedly found it has jurisdiction for these claims under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction, according to the brief, which also took issue with DOJ's claim that the action's true nature is to challenge the final ADD rate (MS Solar Investments v. U.S., CIT #21-00303).

The Court of International Trade failed to consider all the relevant statutory language, legislative history and facts when it ruled in three recent opinions that Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs can be deducted from a respondent's U.S. price in antidumping duty calculations, Nippon Steel told the trade court in a motion for judgment Feb. 25. Nippon argued the tariffs should be considered remedial, not ordinary customs duties eligible for deductions (Nippon Steel Corporation v. U.S., CIT #21-00533).

The Court of International Trade dismissed three customs cases brought by California importer Mirror Metals in a series of three orders for lack of prosecution. All three cases were filed in February 2020 and concern CBP's assessment of Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs on the company's various metal articles. Filed under Section 1581(a), the cases contested the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security's denial of Mirror Metals' exclusion requests (Mirror Metals v. U.S., CIT #20-00039, -00040, -00041). While the importer has two other nearly identical cases filed at CIT, it also has a case filed under Section 1581(i), the trade court's "residual" jurisdiction, to contest the BIS exclusion denials that the court has found to be the proper jurisdictional outlet. Most recently in that case, the trade court remanded the denials to BIS for further review (see 2111190056).

South Korean exporter Dongkuk Steel Mill filed a complaint at the Court of International Trade March 2 to contest the Commerce Department's 2019 review of the countervailing duty order on cut-to-length carbon-quality steel plate from South Korea. Dongkuk challenges Commerce's finding that the provision of carbon emission permits to mandatory respondent Hyundai Steel constituted a countervailable subsidy. The result of the review was a 0.56% CVD rate for Dongkuk, which participated in the review as a voluntary respondent (Dongkuk Steel Mill Co. v. U.S., CIT #22-00032).

Following oral argument over a question of whether a questionnaire submitted in lieu of verification constitutes verification in an antidumping matter, both the plaintiffs, led by Ellwod City Forge Co., and the defendant-intervenors, led by Metalcam, submitted follow-up briefs. Metalcam told the Court of International Trade that the Commerce Department acted within its discretion to issue the questionnaire instead of on-site verification. Meanwhile, Ellwood responded to the oral argument by arguing that it exhausted administrative remedies on this question, but that even if it did not, this should not bar consideration of the legal claims (Ellwood City Forge Company v. United States, CIT #21-00073).

A recent Court of International Trade opinion left prior court precedent on the question of what constitutes a substantial transformation "dead, or on life support," an analysis from Neville Peterson said. The result is that importers who have been told by CBP that the country of origin of their goods is the country of origin of the goods' major inputs or essential components will likely seek reconsideration of those rulings, seeking refunds on Section 301 China tariffs in particular, the firm said.

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