The U.S. moved to resolve a customs case brought by gunmaker Glock in favor of the company, offering to pay the importer refunds for royalty payments on its lone entry of pistol parts. The government said it wasn't "conceding or admitting to any factual or legal issues," but it would pay the refund "given the amount in controversy." Later cases on the valuation of the pistol parts will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, the brief said. The refund is less than $50 (Glock v. U.S., CIT # 23-00046).

The Commerce Department was forced to use facts otherwise available in an investigation of Korean steel because the Korean government wasn't "forthcoming" when asked to provide data regarding an electricity subsidy’s costs, a petitioner said June 25 (Hyundai Steel Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00211).

The Commerce Department interpreted the scope of the antidumping duty order on cased pencils from China in a way that is "contrary to the plain language of its terms," importer School Specialty told the Court of International Trade in a June 28 complaint. The importer said the agency also misapplied the "substantial transformation test" in its scope ruling (School Specialty v. U.S., CIT # 24-00098).

In Court of International Trade oral arguments June 25, a judge questioned both parties as to the reason that the Commerce Department made an allegedly ex parte visit to a domestic competitor while it was in the process of reaching a scope ruling on an importer’s ceramic tile (see 2402010046) (Elysium Tiles v. U.S., CIT # 23-00041).

The Supreme Court of the U.S. on June 28 overturned a hallmark of administrative law that had stood for four decades: the court's principle of deferring to federal agencies' interpretation of ambiguous statutes established in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Commerce Department on June 26 called an importer’s claim that it could have double-counted industry support for an antidumping investigation “misplaced,” saying that double-counting wasn’t possible normally under the department's calculation method and that there was no evidence U.S. producers had “literally counted each ton of pipe they produced twice” (Tenaris Bay City v. U.S., CIT # 22-00343).

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's decision to pick a secondary mandatory respondent in an antidumping review despite temporal limits on the selection process. However, Judge Mark Barnett sent back the agency's methodology for picking the respondent due to its failure to explain its removal of Shandong Linglong Tyre Co. from the list of eligible exporters.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a June 26 text-only order granted the government's request for 30 more days to file its reply brief in a customs case from importer Blue Sky The Color of Imagination on the customs classification of calendar planners. The reply is now due Aug. 2 (Blue Sky The Color of Imagination v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1710).

Further information placed on the record during a remand shows importers evaded antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese glycine by transshipping their product through Indonesia, a petitioner claimed June 26 before the Court of International Trade (Newtrend USA v. U.S., CIT # 22-00347).

The Commerce Department is attempting to skip the first step of analyzing whether a product is covered under antidumping and countervailing duty orders on “mouldings and millwork products” from China -- determining if the product is actually either a “moulding” or a “millwork product,” an importer said June 24 in support of its motion for judgment (see 2401290043) (Hardware Resources v. U.S., CIT # 23-00150).