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The Court of International Trade sent back parts of and upheld one element of the Commerce Department's final results of the 2017-2018 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on welded line pipe from South Korea, in an April 19 opinion. Judge Claire Kelly sent back Commerce's particular market situation determination and adjustment methodology, PMS adjustment to respondent SeAH Steel Corp.'s home market sales for the sales-below-cost test, denial of a constructed export price (CEP) offset for SeAH, reallocation of respondent NEXTEEL Co.'s suspended loss and non-prime product costs, and separate rate calculation. The judge sustained, however, Commerce's decision to cap SeAH's freight revenue.

The Commerce Department cannot use an antidumping evasion finding to reject AD review respondent Z.A. Sea Foods Private Limited's (ZASF) Vietnamese data when calculating normal value, the Court of International Trade said in an April 19 opinion. Since ZASF is not mentioned in the Enforce and Protect Act investigation cited by Commerce as the basis for rejecting the Vietnamese data, it is not clear how the agency decided that some of ZASF's Vietnamese sales ultimately wound up in the U.S., Judge Gary Katzmann said.

The Commerce Department properly decided not to individually investigate Siemens Energy's Spanish subsidiary Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) in an antidumping duty investigation, DOJ and AD petitioner Wind Tower Trade Coalition argued in two reply briefs at the Court of International Trade. DOJ said that the law is silent over how Commerce must proceed when all the initially picked respondents withdraw from the investigation, while the WTTC argued that it's not uncommon for Commerce to replace a mandatory respondent late in an investigation (Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy v. United States, CIT #21-00449).

The Commerce Department and the Court of International Trade properly held that China Custom Manufacturing's solar panel mounts do not qualify for the finished goods exclusion from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, DOJ argued in an April 18 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. CCM, along with importer Greentec Engineering, ask Commerce to apply an outdated interpretation of the exclusion that doesn't consider key precedent from the Federal Circuit, the U.S. said (China Custom Manufacturing v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1345).

The Court of International Trade in an April 19 opinion sustained parts and remanded parts of the Commerce Department's final results of the 2017-2018 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on welded line pipe from South Korea. Judge Claire Kelly sustained Commerce's decision to cap respondent SeAH's freight revenue. The judge remanded, however, the agency's particular market situation determination and adjustment methodology, use of a PMS adjustment to SeAH's home market sales for the sales-below-cost test, denial of a constructed export price offset for SeAH, reallocation of respondent NEXTEEL's suspended loss and non-prime product costs and separate rate calculation.

The Commerce Department continued to rely on adverse facts available in a countervailing duty case on remand at the Court of International Trade, holding that respondent Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi failed to act to the best of its ability when providing certain information about a Turkish government subsidiary. While it dropped AFA over Celik Halat's Section III of the initial CVD questionnaire, as instructed by the court, the agency still used AFA over Celik Halat's failure to respond to the Standard Questions Appendix of the Tax Program Appendix for the subsidy (Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi A.S. v. U.S., CIT #21-00050).

The Commerce Department did not properly support its conclusion that it couldn't use antidumping respondent Z.A. Sea Foods Private Limited's (ZASF) Vietnamese sales to calculate normal value, the Court of International Trade ruled in an April 19 opinion. The case concerns a review of the AD order on frozen warm water shrimp from India in which Commerce rejected using ZASF's Vietnamese data for constructed value despite it being the largest market for the respondent's third country sales. The court said that Commerce's reliance on CBP's antidumping evasion determination on Vietnamese shrimp which did not involve ZASF cannot stand as a basis to reject the data. However, the court did uphold the agency's decision to not apply a knowledge test to its assessment of potential third country markets.

The Commerce Department reasonably found that exporter Cheng Shin Rubber Ind. Co.'s tires did not qualify for a scope exclusion for light truck spare tires despite the petitioner agreeing to include specific exclusion language for Cheng Shin's tires, DOJ said in an April 13 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. The exclusion requires that the tires be designed and marketed exclusively as temporary use spare tires for light trucks, and enough evidence sits on the record showing that this wasn't the case for Cheng Shin, the brief said (Cheng Shin Rubber Ind. Co. v. United States, CIT #21-00398).

The Commerce Department slashed antidumping duties for exporter BlueScope Steel from 99.20% to 4.95% after dropping its reliance on adverse facts available, on remand at the Court of International Trade in an April 14 submission. After issuing a supplemental questionnaire to BlueScope during remand proceedings and accepting the exporter's quantity and value data, Commerce said that AFA was no longer warranted (BlueScope Steel Ltd. v. United States, CIT #19-00057).