The Court of International Trade in a March 1 opinion made public March 8 sent back parts of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on common alloy aluminum sheet from Turkey, ruling the Commerce Department did not properly explain its decision not to use an adverse inference for its treatment of respondent Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret's billing adjustments. Judge Gary Katzmann also remanded the case, per Commerce's request, over the agency's duty neutral method for calculating Assan's duty drawback adjustment. Katzmann upheld Assan's duty drawback adjustment itself, Commerce's denial of a home market rebate adjustment to Assan and the agency's reliance on Assan's affiliated freight costs.
The Court of International Trade in a March 3 order upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping case which slashed the dumping margin for respondent Ajmal Steel Tubes & Pipe Industries after the agency accepted the company's answers to the Section A questionnaire response originally rejected as untimely filed. The document was turned in late due to technical complications as a result of firm Barnes Richardson's switch to a work-from-home environment. The court remanded the issue since Commerce gave itself numerous extensions while rejecting the two-hour late submission.
The Court of International Trade on March 3 granted a motion for a preliminary injunction against the liquidation of unliquidated activated carbon entries from separate rate respondents Ningxia Guanghua Cherishmet Activated Carbon and Datong Municipal Yunguang Activated Carbon. Judge Mark Barnett said that he was unpersuaded by the government's claims that the PI motion illegally expands the issues in the case. Citing past CIT judgments, the judge held the enlargement concept is reserved only for cases where an intervenor adds new legal claims to those already before the court.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a March 2 opinion upheld a Court of International Trade ruling that found solar panel mounts made by appellant China Custom Manufacturing do not qualify for the "finished merchandise" exclusion from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China. Judges Pauline Newman, Raymond Chen and Tiffany Cunningham ruled that the matter is "governed squarely" by the Federal Circuit's ruling in Shenyang Yuanda Aluminum Indus. Eng'g Co. v. U.S., where the court said that a "part or subassembly ... cannot be a finished product." CCM had admitted that its mounts are parts of its solar panel mounting system.
The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 24 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's use of the Cohen's d test as part of its differential pricing analysis to root out "masked" dumping, ruling that the agency "adequately addressed" questions raised by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over the use of the test. The appellate court had held that use of the d test could be "problematic" when the distribution of a respondent's sales isn't normal, or in cases of few data points or minimal variance in the exporter's sales. Judge Claire Kelly held that Commerce sufficiently explained that the test adequately functions despite those concerns.
The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 24 opinion denied plaintiff Grupo Simec's bid for a preliminary injunction against cash deposits in an antidumping duty case covering rebar from Mexico. Judge Stephen Vaden said Grupo Simec failed to clear the "high standard" of proving it would suffer irreparable harm absent the injunction because the company failed to show the "immediacy" of the harm it would suffer should it continue to pay cash deposits.
The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 17 opinion made public Feb. 24 upheld the Commerce Department's interpretation of the Major Inputs Rule to allow the use of third-country surrogate data as "information available" for finding the cost of production of a major input bought from an affiliated non-market economy-based supplier.
The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 23 order denied antidumping respondent SeAH Steel's request for reconsideration of the court's opinion upholding the Commerce Department's use of the Cohen's d test as part of its differential pricing analysis. SeAH said the case should be reconsidered given the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's opinion in Stupp v. U.S. calling into question the use of the test, which is used to root out "masked" dumping. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ruled the use of an entire population of data rather than just a sample "sufficiently negates" the questions raised in Stupp.
The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 16 opinion sent back the Commerce Department's final determination in the antidumping duty investigation into wind towers from Spain. In the investigation, Commerce picked only one mandatory respondent, hitting it with a 73% adverse facts available rate taken from the petitioner after the company backed out of the investigation. The agency used this rate for the non-individually selected respondents and the all-others rate. Judge Timothy Stanceu, criticizing the "limited and peculiar" situation the agency set up for itself, sent back Commerce's decision to pick only one respondent and use the AFA rate for the all-others margin.