Antidumping duty respondent Goodluck India Limited filed a complaint at the Court of International Trade to contest the Commerce Department's assessment of antidumping duties on its entries since they were not subject to the ADD order at the time, the company said. Goodluck participated in the antidumping duty investigation into cold-drawn mechanical tubing of carbon and alloy steel from India in which it was assigned a 33.7% cash deposit rate. The respondent then challenged this decision at CIT, which eventually overturned Commerce, affirming a final zero percent margin for Goodluck. The result was Commerce revoking the ADD order for Goodluck (Goodluck India Limited v. United States, CIT #22-00024).

The Court of International Trade partially granted the U.S.' partial remand request in a challenge of over 54 Section 232 steel tariff exclusion denials. In the Feb. 1 order, the court allowed the Commerce Department to take another look at 15 of the 54 exclusion denials, per its request, but only gave the agency 106 days to do so, as opposed to the 150-day timeline for which Commerce asked. While the plaintiff, NLMK Pennsylvania, consented to both Commerce's remand request and the agency's condition that a new decision maker be involved in the denials, the steel company sought further conditions such as the identities of the officials who would conduct the new reviews. The trade court denied NLMK's requests.

The 15% tariff on most solar panels and the 15% tariff on imported solar cells past a 2.5 gigawatt threshold are slated to expire Feb. 6, and, according to Reuters, the White House is considering accepting some of the International Trade Commission's recommendations on extending the solar panel and cell safeguard, and rejecting others. The ITC recommended reducing the current 15% rate by just .25% in 2022, and by another quarter point each year, until early 2026, when the safeguard would expire.

Importer Meyer Corporation filed a corrected reply brief in a key case over the use of "first sale" valuation on goods from China after its initial brief was found to not be in compliance with the U.S.Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's rules. The Federal Circuit said that the contact information for Meyer's lawyers didn't match the information on the individuals' entries of appearance on the docket (see 2201240043). Meyer's lead counsel is John Peterson of Neville Peterson. Meyer's resubmission purportedly fixes this error. The brief came in Meyer's appeal based on a Court of International Trade ruling that held that first sale treatment may not be applicable to non-market economy exports (see 2201190059). Meyer argued in the brief that CIT improperly applied the "dual burden of proof" when it denied the importer first sale valuation on its cookware from China (Meyer Corporation v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1932).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should uphold a lower court decision that found that CBP's "indirect method" for weighing importer New Image Global's tobacco wraps that included the weight of additives was legally and scientifically valid, the Department of Justice said in a Jan. 27 brief. Replying to New Image's arguments to the contrary, DOJ said that CBP properly interpreted the excise tax statute to include anything added to the tobacco wraps in the weight of the wraps (New Image Global v. United States, Fed. Cir. #19-2444).

The Commerce Department can use adverse facts available over the Chinese government's failure to provide information on its electricity price-setting practices in a countervailing duty review, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a Jan. 28 opinion. Upholding a decision from the Court of International Trade, the Federal Circuit affirmed Commerce's CV duties for the provision of electricity for less than adequate remuneration (LTAR) after the Chinese government failed to explain price variations across different provinces.

CBP doesn't need to establish intent to defraud the U.S. in order to find an importer evaded antidumping and countervailing duties under the Enforce and Protect Act statute, CBP told the Court of International Trade in its Jan. 27 remand results. Continuing to find that Diamond Tools Technology (DTT) evaded the ADD/CVD order on diamond sawblades from China, CBP said that it only needs to show that DTT submitted false statements to prove evasion. This is in line with the purpose of the law, CBP said, since the purpose is to merely collect AD/CV duties owed to the U.S. (Diamond Tools Technology v. U.S., CIT #20-00060)

Nutricia seeks a Court of International Trade judgment overturning CBP's classification of its infant and children food formulas as food preparations of heading 2106, it said in a motion for summary judgment filed Jan. 24 in the hopes of bringing to a close an over 6-year-old test case. The importer says its formulas, intended to treat a variety of diseases and disorders in infants or children, are "medical foods" classifiable as medicaments of heading 3004 and also duty-free under special tariff provisions for articles for the handicapped under subheading 9817.00.96 (Nutricia North America v. United States, CIT #16-00008).

The Department of Justice's and defendant-intervenor Coalition for Fair Trade in Hardwood Plywood's arguments in favor of CBP's affirmative antidumping duty and countervailing duty evasion finding ignore the procedural rights afforded by the Administrative Procedure Act, plaintiffs American Pacific Plywood and U.S. Global Forest said in a Jan. 24 brief. DOJ and the coalition argue that the plaintiffs are only entitled to what the Enforce and Protect Act statute prescribes, but American Pacific Plywood and U.S. Global Forest said this ignores the plaintiffs' other due process rights (American Pacific Plywood v. U.S., CIT Consol #20-03914).

The Commerce Department's requirement that an antidumping respondent report all of its factors of production (FOP) data on a control number (CONNUM)-specific basis violated the law because it's a legislative rule subject to the Administrative Procedure Act but was imposed without the required notice-and-comment period, respondent Shanxi Pioneer Hardware Industrial Co. said in a Jan. 26 brief. Responding to arguments from the Department of Justice and the AD petitioner at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Pioneer also said that even if the requirement isn't deemed a legislative rule, Commerce's CONNUM-specific rule is unlawful since it restricted the agency's ability to rely on non-CONNUM-specific data (Xi'an Metals & Minerals Import & Export Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2205).