The Commerce Department disregarded the potential for countervailing duty respondent CS Wind Vietnam to manipulate its CVD margin through its relationship with its Korean parent company, plaintiff Wind Tower Trade Coalition (WTTC) said in Sept. 7 comments on Commerce's remand results. Submitting its arguments to the Court of International Trade, WTTC said Commerce's use of CS Wind Korea's reported sales value in the sales denominator was inconsistent with the agency's regulations and past practice (Wind Tower Trade Coalition v. U.S., CIT #20-03692).

The Court of International Trade denied a motion by Midwest-CBK that asked the court to have two issues appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in a Sept. 7 order from Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves. The order said that the issues at hand did not meet the requirements for an interlocutory appeal because they involved questions of fact, not purely law (Midwest-CBK, LLC v. United States, CIT Consol. #17-00154).

The Commerce Department in a pair of remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade stuck by its position to exclude importers Worldwide Door Components' and Columbia Aluminum Products' door thresholds from the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China. After the trade court remanded the case for a second time, finding that the previous remand results were not submitted in a form the trade court could sustain, Commerce offered a further explanation for its decision to find that the thresholds fit under the finished merchandise exclusion to the orders (Worldwide Door Components v. U.S., CIT #19-00012) (Columbia Aluminum Products v. U.S., CIT #19-00013).

The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 7 order granted the U.S.'s partial consent motion for a voluntary remand in an Enforce and Protect Act matter brought by H&E Home and Classic Metals Suppliers, later joined by Global Aluminum as a consolidated plaintiff. The case is related to CBP's finding that the plaintiffs were evading the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions by transshipping them through the Dominican Republic (H&E Home v. U.S., CIT #21-00337).

The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 7 paperless order instructed the plaintiff, Environment One, in a case over a denied Section 301 exclusion request to file a supplemental brief over whether a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision is relevant to the current action (Environment One Corporation v. United States, CIT #22-00124).

The Commerce Department properly included Vandewater International's steel branch outlets under the scope of the antidumping duty order on carbon steel butt-weld pipe fittings from China, the Court of International Trade held in a Sept. 8 opinion. Judge Leo Gordon found that while the plaintiffs, led by Vandewater, showed that information on the record could back a finding that their outlets could be excluded from the scope of the order, he could not agree that Commerce acted unreasonably in reaching the opposing conclusion using each of the (k)(2) factors.

A group of domestic steel manufacturers doesn't have the right to intervene in a spate of challenges to denied requests for exclusions from Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a Sept. 8 opinion. Ruling against the Court of International Trade's opinion that the would-be intervenors did not establish standing, Judges Kimberly Moore and Todd Hughes ultimately found that the interveners nevertheless failed to identify a legally protectable interest to qualify as intervenors under the trade court's rules.

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

The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 6 order consolidated four cases contesting the International Trade Commission's decision that led to the antidumping duty order on raw honey from Vietnam. The four nearly identical cases argue that, contrary to the ITC's findings, the Vietnamese import volume hasn't jumped enough to undermine the remedial effect of the antidumping duty order, such as to require a critical circumstances determination (see 2208040065). In the proceeding, the commissioners ruled that imports subject to the affirmative critical circumstances finding are likely to seriously undercut the remedial effect of the AD order on Vietnam, so honey from Vietnam was subject to 90 more days of retroactively imposed duties. The plaintiffs, all represented by Gregory Husisian of Foley & Lardner, contested the decision at the trade court (Sweet Harvest Foods v. U.S., CIT Consol. #22-00188).

A Canadian softwood lumber producer cannot claim to be a successor-in-interest to another lumber company still in existence, the government argued in a Sept. 6 brief at the Court of International Trade (GreenFirst Forest Products, v. United States, CIT # 22-00097)