The Court of International Trade on April 8 referred LE Commodities' challenge to 14 denied requests for exclusions from Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs to mediation before Judge Leo Gordon. The order was penned by Judge M. Miller Baker, who gave the parties until July 8 to complete the mediation, unless Gordon "recommends an extension" (LE Commodities v. United States, CIT # 22-00245).

Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit questioned the Commerce Department's decision to pull forward a 78% adverse facts available rate from a prior antidumping duty review in the 2018-19 AD review on steel nails from Taiwan, but not the lower rate for the non-individually examined respondents (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2128).

Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit asked appellants to explain why they shouldn’t remand a case regarding the ambiguity of the term “butt-weld” in an antidumping duty order on butt-weld pipe fittings from China. They said that if the term is not ambiguous because industry practice defines it, as the appellants claim, then what the industry practice actually entails is a factual question that must be decided by the Commerce Department (Vandewater International v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1093).

The Court of International Trade on April 3 again sent back the Commerce Department's decision to countervail exporter KG Dongbu Steel's three debt-to-equity restructurings after initially declining to countervail them in the preceding three countervailing duty reviews on corrosion-resistant steel products from South Korea.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 4 sustained the Commerce Department's decision that Australian exporter BlueScope Steel (AIS) didn't reimburse its affiliated U.S. importer, BlueScope Steel Americas, for antidumping duties. Judges Kimberly Moore, Todd Hughes and Leonard Stark echoed the Court of International Trade in finding that it would have been "unreasonable" for the exporter to include the AD in the price charged to the importer because the "exporter itself was not responsible for those duties."

Grace Ocean Private Limited, owner of the vessel that brought down a segment of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last week, filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on April 1 seeking to avoid liability "for any loss or damage arising out of" the vessel's collision with the bridge. The manager of the M/V Dali vessel, Synergy Marine, also joined the petition (In the Matter of the Petition of Grace Ocean Private Limited, D. Md. # 24-00941).

Countervailing duty petitioner Rebar Trade Action Coalition opened its case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit against the Commerce Department's decision on remand finding that shipbuilding company Nur Gemicilik ve Tic, an affiliate of respondent Kaptan Demir, is not Kaptan's cross-owned input supplier. Filing an opening brief on April 2, the petitioner said that Commerce originally got it right in cross-attributing Nur's subsidies to Kaptan in the 2018 CVD review on rebar from Turkey (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1431).

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security continued to deny importer Seneca Food's eight Section 232 steel tariff exclusion requests for its tin mill products on remand at the Court of International Trade. BIS said that U.S. Steel can make the same products in a sufficient quantity and in a timely manner to satisfy Seneca's needs, prompting the rejection of the exclusion bids (Seneca Foods Corp. v. United States, CIT # 22-00243).

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The Court of International Trade in a March 11 decision made public April 1 sent back the Commerce Department's departure from the expected method in setting the separate rate companies' rate in the 2016-17 review on the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China.