The Court of International Trade in a Nov. 13 opinion sustained parts and sent back parts of the 2019-20 review of the antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Thailand. Judge Stephen Vaden sent back the Commerce Department's affiliation analysis regarding mandatory respondent Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Co. and its customer BNK Steel Co., telling the agency to "apply the proper statutory test for affiliation, and explain" how the facts back its decision. The judge, however, sustained Commerce's affiliation analysis of Saha Thai and six of its other customers. The decision also granted Commerce's request to reconsider the scope of the review following an impending Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision in a separate case brought by Saha Thai.
The Court of International Trade in a Nov. 14 opinion again remanded the Commerce Department's de jure specificity finding regarding Germany's KAV program as part of the countervailing duty investigation of forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany. Judge Claire Kelly said that Commerce, in its second remand results, did not explain how the German subsidy program limits usage to certain industries or enterprises and failed to consider the program's economic and horizontal properties and application. The program is available in Germany to certain customers based on energy usage. Kelly ruled that the fact that the program is limited does not mean that it is de jure specific.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Nov. 13 said then-President Donald Trump legally revoked a Section 201 safeguard tariff exclusion on bifacial solar panels, in a decision that gives the president wide discretion in taking tariff action. Reversing the Court of International Trade's decision, Judges Alan Lourie, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark said the president did not clearly misconstrue the statute to find that he could make a trade-restricting modification to past Section 201 tariff action.
The Commerce Department legally found that importer Valeo North America's T-series aluminum sheet is covered by the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on common alloy aluminum sheet from China, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Nov. 8 opinion. The case was remanded so that Commerce could address evidence that Valeo's product undergoes heat treatment, barring it from being classified as subject 3XXX-series core. Judge Mark Barnett said that Valeo did not present a "cogent challenge" to Commerce's finding that Valeo's T-series sheet "undergoes a combination of annealing and cold-working" that doesn't bar classification as a 3XXX-series alloy.
The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 30 opinion sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in a case on the 2017-18 antidumping review of multilayered wood flooring from China. Judge Richard Eaton said Commerce properly calculated the surrogate manufacturing overhead ratio by using the indirect production expenses amount in the numerator and listing its reasons for taking out energy costs and putting them in the denominator. The judge also upheld the use of Romania's International Labor Organization data to calculate the surrogate's hourly labor value, saying "the data reflects hours actually worked in the surrogate country."
The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 23 opinion rejected importer PrimeSource Building Products' request for a stay pending its U.S. Supreme Court appeal of a decision allowing the expansion of Section 232 steel and aluminum duties onto "derivative" products. Judges Jennifer Choe-Groves, M. Miller Baker and Timothy Stanceu refused to overturn a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision rejecting a stay request. Baker, penning a concurring opinion, said the court lacks authority to stay the Federal Circuit's judgment, but even if it did, the importer has not shown irreparable injury because the court has the authority to order reliquidation.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in an Oct. 23 opinion sustained the Commerce Department's decision not to countervail the South Korean government's provision of electricity as part of the countervailing duty investigation into carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from South Korea. Judges Raymond Chen, Todd Hughes and Tiffany Cunningham said that, after the appellate court's previous rejection of Commerce's preferential rate analysis, the agency appropriately used a less than adequate remuneration analysis. Commerce also sufficiently investigated the Korean Power Exchange's generation costs and found no countervailable benefit, the court said.
The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 12 opinion made public Oct. 20 remanded parts and sustained parts of the International Trade Commission's injury determination on imports of seamless pipe from South Korea, Russia and Ukraine. Judge M. Miller Baker sent back the ITC's failure to give Russian exporter PAO TMK a chance to argue against its sole reliance on questionnaire data from one unnamed company as to German imports and data from another unnamed company as to Mexican imports. Baker also remanded the ITC's acceptance of "Company A's questionnaire" while rejecting "Company C's." The court sustained the commission's estimate of seamless pipe imports from Ukraine and refusal to determine what imports correspond to domestic like products.
The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 20 opinion sustained the Commerce Department's 2020 review of the countervailing duty order on truck and bus tires from China. Judge Mark Barnett said Commerce properly levied Qingdao Ge Rui Da Rubber Co. with an adverse facts available rate over its alleged use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program. The court said that the exporter failed to raise a host of challenges to the use of AFA administratively, barring relief on its claims at CIT.
The Court of International Trade on Oct. 20 granted Canadian exporter Midwest-CBK's motion to dismiss its case on whether its sales from a Canadian warehouse to U.S. customers are "sales for export to the U.S." or "domestic sales." Following a prior CIT ruling finding that the company's sales are for export to the U.S., the case shifted to a question of how to value the goods. Midwest-CBK said that obtaining evidence on this question is impossible given its business model, moving to dismiss the case to pursue its original argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.