Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week, in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

The Court of International Trade on March 11 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results excluding importer Crane Resistoflex's ductile iron lap joint flanges from the antidumping duty order on pipe fittings from China. Judge Timothy Stanceu upheld the decision as now being in a form the court could sustain, after previously finding it to not be, and as being backed by substantial evidence due to the agency's consideration of a host of (k)(1) factors.

Ford Motor Company agreed to pay $365 million to settle allegations that it knowingly undervalued hundreds of thousands of cargo vans, DOJ announced. The settlement comes five years after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that CBP properly classified Ford's Transit Connect vehicles as cargo vans, dutiable at 25%, and not as passenger vans, dutiable at 2.5%.

The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The Court of International Trade in a confidential March 11 opinion remanded the Commerce Department's final results of the sixth review of the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China. In a letter to the litigants, Judge Richard Eaton said he intends to issue a public version of the opinion "in the near future," giving parties until March 18 to review the confidential information in the matter (Fusong Jinlong Wooden Group Co. v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 19-00144).

The Court of International Trade released its questions ahead of March 19 oral arguments in a case on the 2019-21 review of the antidumping duty order on Indian quartz countertops. Judge Mark Barnett asked a host of questions pertaining to the Commerce Department's filing deadlines (Cambria Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00007).

Honeywell, an importer of chordal, radial and web brake segments used in aircraft wheel and brake assemblies, said in a March 5 motion for judgment that its goods were classifiable under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 8803 rather than heading 6307, as CBP ruled (Honeywell International Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 17-00256).

In oral arguments March 7, Court of International Trade Judge Timothy Reif heard the government’s and exporters’ arguments in a case regarding an administrative review on multilayered wood flooring from China. The review’s final results were based on the calculated rate of only one respondent after it was discovered selection of the other was based on an error by the Commerce Department (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co. v. U.S., CIT # 20-03885).

The Court of International Trade on March 11 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results excluding importer Crane Resistoflex's ductile iron lap joint flanges from the antidumping duty order on pipe fittings from China. Judge Timothy Stanceu previously remanded the scope ruling on the grounds that it wasn't in a form that could be sustained by the court. Commerce said a Federal Register notice will be published stating that Crane's flanges are outside the order's scope.

The U.S. will appeal a January Court of International Trade decision upholding the International Trade Commission's affirmative injury finding on mattresses from a host of countries. The government will take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where it likely will be consolidated with exporter CVB's appeal of the same decision (see 2402160027). In its decision, the trade court found errors in the ITC's assessment of whether the market industry is segmented, but it still sustained the affirmative injury finding due to the "harmless error" principle (see 2312200070) (CVB v. U.S., CIT # 21-00288).