The Court of International Trade remanded parts of the 2018 countervailing duty review on utility scale wind towers from Vietnam in a March 24 opinion made public April 4. Judge Timothy Reif sent the case back to the Commerce Department for it to address evidence submitted by the CVD petitioner Wind Tower Trade Coalition over alleged manipulation of the denominators used in the benefit calculation and to substantiate its conclusion that respondent CS Wind Vietnam didn't import its steel plate, thereby neglecting an import duty exemption subsidy.

The Commerce Department stuck by its use of the Cohen's d statistical test as part of its differential pricing analysis to detect "masked dumping" in antidumping proceedings, offering a more detailed explanation of the practice in April 4 remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade. Responding to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's remand on the issue, Commerce repeatedly stressed that certain statistical assumptions did not need to be true to properly run the test since the test measures the practical rather than the statistical significance of the data and Commerce has the entire population of data rather than just a sample (Stupp Corp. v. United States, CIT #15-00334).

The Court of International Trade in a confidential opinion April 4 remanded the Commerce Department's final results in the 2017-18 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on solar cells from China. In a letter following the opinion, Judge Claire Kelly said she intends to release the public version of the opinion on April 12, giving the litigants a chance review any confidential information. Per the case's complaint, the plaintiff, exporter Risen Energy Co., challenged Commerce's surrogate value for silver paste, the agency's calculation of the financial ratios and the pick for primary surrogate country, among other things (Risen Energy Co. v. United States, CIT #20-03743).

The Court of International Trade should not stay proceedings in an anti-circumvention inquiry challenge because, contrary to the U.S.'s contention, a case currently on appeal will not "dictate" the outcome of the case, plaintiffs HLDS (B) Steel and HLD Clark Steel Pipe Co. said in an April 4 reply brief. Unique elements of the case brought by the plaintiffs undercut DOJ's claim that the unrelated appeal will resolve the matter at hand, the brief said (HLDS (B) Steel SDN BHD v. United States, CIT #21-00638).

The Court of International Trade remanded in part and sustained in part the Commerce Department's final results in the 2018 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on utility scale wind towers from Vietnam, in a March 24 opinion made public April 4. Judge Timothy Reif said that on remand Commerce must address evidence presented by CVD petitioner Wind Tower Trade Coalition of respondent CS Wind Vietnam's alleged manipulation of the denominator used in the benefit calculation and evidence relating to the country of origin of CS Wind Vietnam's steel plate.

The unanimous three-judge opinion at the U.S. Court of International Trade remanding the lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on April 1 for correcting deficiencies in the agency’s Administrative Procedure Act compliance extends the current litigation at least until mid-summer. The opinion, written by Chief Judge Mark Barnett and coming two months to the day after Feb. 1 oral argument was held (see 2202010059), gives USTR 90 days, to June 30, to respond to the remand order, and orders the plaintiffs and the government to submit a joint status report 14 days after that, including a proposed schedule on “the further disposition of this litigation.”

A recent stipulated judgment in a case brought by North American Interpipe granting the importer refunds on Section 232 steel and aluminum duties is relevant to six U.S. steel companies' court actions that are seeking to intervene in challenges to the Commerce Department's Section 232 exclusion denials, the steel companies said. Filing a notice of supplemental authority to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the steel companies said that the settlement is "relevant to the parties' arguments concerning the potential for settlement of these actions" (California Steel Industries, Inc. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-2172).

An importer is asking the Court of International Trade to direct CBP to reliquidate entries of Chinese citric acid anhydrous that Thatcher says CBP improperly liquidated as subject to antidumping and countervailing duties. In its March 31 complaint, Thatcher said that CBP extended liquidation of the entries with neither a "statutory basis" nor the "legal authority" to do so and without instruction from the Commerce Department (Thatcher Company, Inc. v. United States, CIT #20-00067).

The Commerce Department opened the record on remand to accept Turkish exporter Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi's sections B and C questionnaire responses after the Court of International Trade ruled it was an abuse of discretion to reject the minutes-late submissions. In remand results filed April 1, Commerce dropped the dumping rate for Celik from 53.65% to 17.88%, centering the case on other issues in the antidumping duty investigation (Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi A.S. v. U.S., CIT #21-00045).

The Court of International Trade should reject the U.S.'s motion to dismiss a case challenging the Commerce Department's denial of a request to issue a scope ruling since the motion is "factually and legally inaccurate," plaintiffs led by Zhejiang Yuhua Timber Co. said in an April 1 brief. The plaintiffs said that the U.S.'s position that jurisdiction would be established at the end of a changed circumstances review requested by the plaintiffs is "plainly without any factual basis and purely speculative" (Zhejiang Yuhua Timber Co. v. United States, CIT #21-00502).