Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) and Riverside Plywood, two plaintiffs in a countervailing duty case, submitted a notice of supplemental authority saying the Commerce Department has shown it can verify non-use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program (EBCP) even without information from the Chinese government. Because Commerce has done so in a different CVD investigation following the submission of standard supplemental questionnaire responses, verification is possible in the current case, the plaintiffs told the Court of International Trade (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co. v. U.S., CIT #20-03885).

The Commerce Department's decision to deny a scope ruling request is not a judicially reviewable action, the Department of Justice said in its motion to dismiss a case brought by three companies at the Court of International Trade. CIT jurisdiction will instead be established at the end of a changed circumstances review requested by the plaintiffs, DOJ said (Zhejiang Yuhua Timber Co. v. United States, CIT #21-00502).

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CBP ignored the Court of International Trade's ruling that it needs some finding of culpability before determining that importer Diamond Tools Technology evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on diamond sawblades from China, DTT said in a Feb. 28 brief. Instead, CBP just ignored the court's definitions of the terms "false" and "omission" and illogically claimed that the customs penalty law's establishment of specific degrees of culpability negates the Enforce and Protect Act's culpability requirement, DTT argued (Diamond Tools Technology v. United States, CIT #20-00060).

A Feb. 24 Court of International Trade decision could result in "inching toward a saner and more legally sound approach to origin determinations" involving the substantial transformation test, customs lawyer Larry Friedman of Barnes Richardson said in a blog post Feb. 24. The language in the decision is "generally favorable for a simplified and more reasonable approach to origin," after years of focus on pre-determined end use of assembled components following the trade court's unappealed 2016 decision in Energizer.

A group of U.S. welded pipe manufacturers is appealing a Court of International Trade ruling that the Commerce Department can't make a particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test (see 2112280030). American Cast Iron Pipe, Berg Steel Pipe, Berg Spiral Pipe, Dura-Bond Industries and Stupp along with Greens Bayou Pipe Mill, JSW Steel (USA), Skyline Steel, Trinity Products and Welspun Tubular joined the Feb. 25 notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The CIT decision was one in a long line of court decisions finding that the statute doesn't permit a PMS adjustment in this way (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT #19-00056). This position was recently upheld by the Federal Circuit in Hyundai Steel v. United States and is currently being petitioned for a full court rehearing by the AD petitioner of the relevant order Welspun.

Section 232 national security duties are not "ordinary customs duties" and shouldn't be deducted from an antidumping duty respondent's export price and constructed export price, exporter Borusan Mannesmann said in a Feb. 25 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Instead, Section 232 duties should be found to be "special duties" because they were imposed by a specific congressional delegation of authority to the president, the brief said (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT #22-00057).

The government's right to collect on a bond against a surety doesn't accrue until the surety breaches the bond, the Department of Justice said in a Feb. 28 motion for judgment in a case seeking to collect on a bond that covers imports entered during 2002-2006. Since the terms of the bond say that the surety must pay "as demanded by CBP," the statute of limitations on which to file suit to collect payment runs from when CBP demands payment, the brief said (United States v. Aegis Security Insurance Co., CIT #20-03628).

The Commerce Department didn't "consider the plain language of the scope" when it found a type of aluminum sheet imported from Turkey by AA Metals to be covered by the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on common alloy aluminum sheet from China, the importer said in a Feb. 22 complaint challenging a scope ruling issued by Commerce in response to a CBP covered merchandise referral in an AD/CVD evasion investigation (AA Metals v. United States, CIT #22-00051).

The Commerce Department stuck by its decision to hit affiliated antidumping respondents Ghigi 1870 and Pasta Zara with an adverse inference over their U.S. payment dates in Feb. 28 remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade. However, the agency dropped the adverse inference on the U.S. sales for which Commerce verified the correct date. The result, if sustained, is a weighted-average dumping margin of 91.74% for Ghigi/Zara (Ghigi 1870 S.P.A. v. United States, CIT #20-00023).