In a complaint before the Court of International Trade filed Jan. 20, two exporters alleged that the Commerce Department failed to correct multiple ministerial errors during an antidumping duty review on Chinese activated carbon (Ningxia Guanghua Cherishmet Activated Carbon Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00262).

The Court of International Trade on Jan. 21 sustained in part and remanded in part the Commerce Department's remand results in the expedited countervailing duty review on softwood lumber products from Canada, in a confidential decision. Judge Mark Barnett sent the review back for Commerce to "reconsider or further explain its subsidy calculations with respect to" the consolidated entity of D&G/Portbec. The court found for the government on the remaining issues (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 19-00122).

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Responding to U.S. opposition to its summary judgment motion, importer Mitsubishi Power Americas said Jan. 17 that the government “proffered nothing to dispute” expert testimony that shows its products are neither filters nor purifiers and misunderstood the way they actually work (Mitsubishi Power Americas v. U.S., CIT #21-00573).

The Court of International Trade on Jan. 22 largely dismissed importer Prysmian Cables and Systems USA's suit challenging the Commerce Department's denial of its Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests. Judge Stephen Vaden said the company's claims that Commerce failed to act since it didn't perform three required actions for each denial fall short, since the agency didn't fail to act. A denial isn't an "action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed: It is a decision," the court said. The court also dismissed most of Prysmian's challenges to the denials as being arbitrary and capricious, finding them to have been brought beyond the applicable two-year statute of limitations for challenging Section 232 exclusion request denials.

Chinese manufacturer Camel Group Co. took to the Court of International Trade last week to contest its placement on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Entity List, arguing that the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force "utterly disregarded, ignored and trampled" its due process rights in a "flawed and poorly executed process." The company said FLETF illicitly conducted the process in the shadows, refusing to offer it access to any of the evidence used against the company, and that the decision to deny its petition to be removed from the list wasn't backed by substantial evidence (Camel Group Co. v. United States, CIT # 25-00022).

The United States and plywood importer Richmond International Forest Products settled their 2021 case in the Court of International Trade Jan. 16. The parties agreed in a motion for stipulated judgment that the exporter’s entries of Chinese-origin plywood were subject to antidumping, countervailing and Section 301 duties. Its Cambodia-origin plywood, however, was not subject to any of the three (Richmond International Forest Products v. United States, CIT #s 21-00063, -00318, -00319).

A group of importers, led by Tenaris Bay City Inc., will appeal a recent Court of International Trade decision sustaining the Commerce Department's finding that it had sufficient U.S. industry support to launch the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on oil country tubular goods from Argentina, Mexico, South Korea and Russia. After previously remanding the issue, the trade court said the agency adequately addressed contrary evidence (see 2412110010). On remand, Commerce said it appropriately used industry source data and that finishing operations weren't double counted (Tenaris Bay City Inc. v. United States, CIT # 22-00343).

Vehicle side bar importer Keystone Automotive Operations’ classification dispute shouldn’t be granted reconsideration after a Court of International Trade ruling went against it (see 2410070030), the U.S. said Jan. 15 (Keystone Automotive Operations v. United States, CIT # 21-00215).

Importer AM Stone & Cabinets filed a pair of complaints at the Court of International Trade, arguing that its products were unlawfully found to have been made in China based on adverse facts available, despite the company's full cooperation and a lack of evidence showing that its products were made in China (AM Stone & Cabinets v. United States, CIT #s 24-00241, -00243).