The U.S. requested the chance to take another look at an Enforce and Protect Act investigation to consider documents that were not sent from one CBP office to another, in a July 30 motion for remand in the Court of International Trade. The agency also sought the remand in light of the court's decision in Royal Brush v. United States, in which CIT held that CBP failed to provide adequate public summaries of business confidential information (BCI) (see 2012020050). The plaintiff in the case, Leco Supply, opposed the remand request, arguing that it is "too broad to be justifiable" under the court's standards for allowing remands (Leco Supply, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00136).

The Court of International Trade issued two opinions on Aug. 3 sustaining the Commerce Department's remand results which held that Simpson Strong-Tie Company's split-drive anchors and crimp drive anchors do not fall within the scope of the antidumping order on certain steel nails from China. Following a Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision, OMG, Inc. v. United States, Commerce changed its findings for both products to exclude them from the order. The Federal Circuit held in OMG that masonry anchors are not nails and thus excluded from the order. Since Simpson's split-drive and crimp drive anchors are similar, they are also excluded, the court said.

The Court of International Trade postponed for two weeks an Aug. 6 deadline for CBP to create the repository through which Section 301 importers can seek to freeze liquidations of customs entries from China with lists 3 and 4A tariff exposure under the court's July 6 preliminary injunction (PI) order. Judge Claire Kelly told a status conference Aug. 2 that the court also is postponing for two weeks the Aug. 6 deadline for plaintiffs and the government to propose modifications to the PI order.

Plaintiffs in a case over the fifth administrative review of the countervailing duty order on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China were granted a consent motion for a statutory injunction, enjoining liquidation on their solar cell entries on July 30. Prior injunctions held up the liquidation of the entries, but they have come to pass, prompting the need for the new injunction. The companies whose entries are now suspended are Changzhou Trina Solar Energy Co., Trina Solar (Changzhou) Science & Technology Co., Changzhou Trina Solar Yabang Energy Co. and Yancheng Trina Solar Energy Technology Co (Canadian Solar Inc., et al. v. U.S., CIT Consol. #19-00187).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dismissed an appeal from Novolipetsk Steel Public Joint Stock Company and Novex Trading (Swiss) SA on July 29 in a challenge of the 2016-17 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on hot-rolled flat rolled carbon-quality steel products. In November 2020, the Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's final results in the case, holding that it was reasonable for the agency to find that the statute permitted it to disregard sales it found were not bona fide from the review. After Novolipetsk and Novex took their case to the Federal Circuit, the plaintiffs also moved to reconsider the case in the trade court. CIT then denied their motion to reconsider the case in an April decision. The Federal Circuit's dissmissal of the appeal came without opinion.

Turkish steel exporter Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi's argument that an “extraordinary circumstance” existed, precluding the timely filing of a questionnaire response in antidumping and countervailing duty cases, is not backed by substantial evidence, the Justice Department said in two July 27 reply briefs. By Celik's counsel's own admission, an oversight in the time difference for the filing deadline resulted in the untimely submission, not counsel's emergency medical procedure, DOJ said (Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi A.S. v. United States, CIT #21-00045, #21-00050).

In one of his first actions as a CIT judge, Chief Judge Mark Barnett was handed a case reassigned from one of the court’s senior judges at the time, Judge R. Kenton Musgrave. The case, involving a duty drawback claim from BP Oil Supply Company, was filed in July 2004 and had languished in the court for years. Lengthy briefing schedules and a million motions to extend later, it had been nearly a decade since the initial complaint had been filed.

The Court of International Trade stayed the liquidation of steel and aluminum "derivative" imports potentially subject to the Section 232 national security tariffs in an Aug. 2 decision. After the trade court struck down the expansion of the tariffs onto the derivative products for violating procedural time limits, it instructed CBP to liquidate entries affected by the decision without the 25% tariff. This liquidation will be stayed pending the appeal of the decision. The court cited a recent Federal Circuit ruling, Transpacific Steel LLC v. United States, in its decision. The Federal Circuit in that decision ruled that tariff action by the president taken after the same procedural time limits was allowed since it was part of a planned course of action.

The U.S. is seeking more than $18 million from importer Crown Cork & Seal in a July 28 complaint filed in the Court of International Trade alleging that the company fraudulently misclassified its metal lid imports to skirt a 2.6% duty rate. The goods -- metal lids for food, beverage, household and consumer products -- are properly classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 8309.90.0000 and are dutiable at that 2.6% rate, the Department of Justice said. Instead, CCS attempted to classify its metal lid imports from Europe between 2004 and 2009 under HTS subheading 7326.90.1000, which has duty-free treatment (The United States v. Crown Cork & Seal, USA, Inc. et al., CIT #21-361).

The Court of International Trade should remand the Commerce Department's failure to meet its obligation to verify the information of mandatory respondent Shakti Forge Industries in an antidumping duty investigation on forged steel fittings from India, petitioner Bonney Forge Corporation, along with the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, said in a July 22 reply brief. Commerce's use of facts otherwise available doesn't excuse the agency from its duty to verify and leads to "absurd results," Bonney Forge said (Bonney Forge Corporation et al. v. United States, CIT #20-03837).