Tire exporter Pirelli Tyre told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that the Commerce Department improperly applied its own legal framework for assessing whether the company rebutted the presumption of Chinese state control in the third review of the antidumping duty order on passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China. Filing a reply brief on Feb. 9, Pirelli said the agency ignored the policy's explicit directive to link all four of the factors concerning de facto foreign state control to a company's "export activities" (Pirelli Tyre Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2266).

The Court of International Trade on Feb. 15 rejected the U.S. government's opposition to a host of lumber importers and exporters' requests to intervene in an antidumping review challenge, siding with nearly 30 years of litigation practice in which non-individually selected companies participate in judicial review of AD/CVD cases. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said that a request for review in an AD/CVD proceeding is sufficient to justify intervention "as a matter of right" at the trade court, rejecting the government's claim that a party must submit factual information or written argument before Commerce to participate at CIT.

The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 8 opinion made public Feb. 13 remanded parts and sustained parts of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on thermal paper from Germany. Judge Gary Katzmann sustained Commerce's inclusion of exporter Koehler Paper's "Blue4est" paper product within the scope of the investigation, its coding of the dynamic sensitivity product characteristic and its application of price adjustments for some home market rebates.

German exporter AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke will appeal a December Court of International Trade decision sustaining the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from Germany. The company will take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where it will contest the decision to uphold Commerce's proposed quality code for sour service pressure vessel plate (see 2312210054). The court said Dillinger didn't make the "requisite showing to demonstrate that reconsideration is appropriate" after the court already rejected the claim (AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke v. United States, CIT # 17-00158).

In a complex case involving antidumping duties on Indian quartz countertops, a defendant-intervenor that represents Indian exporters on Feb. 9 again argued against the AD petitioner’s claim for a 161.56% dumping margin calculated for a review’s non-individually examined respondents (Cambria Company v. U.S., CIT # 23-00007).

The U.S. on Feb. 9 argued the Commerce Department correctly considered all relevant prior scope rulings in finding that an importer’s bricks are within the scope of antidumping and countervailing duty orders on magnesia carbon bricks from China (Fedmet Resources v. U.S., CIT # 23-00117).

The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 8 confidential order sustained in part and remanded in part the Commerce Department's findings in an antidumping duty proceeding on thermal paper from Germany. In a letter, Judge Gary Katzmann gave the litigants until Feb. 12 to review the confidential information in the opinion ahead of issuing the public version of the decision (Mantra Americas v. United States, CIT Consol. # 21-00632).

Calendars are visual objects, not notebooks or weekly planners, the government said Feb. 12 in a tariff classification case contesting CBP’s classification of an importer’s weekly planners as “stationary products” rather than duty-free “calendars” (Blue Sky The Color of Imagination v. U.S., CIT # 21-00624).

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The Commerce Department on Feb. 12 found on remand, and under protest, that a German subsidy was not de jure specific to an exporter of forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany (BGH Edelstahl Siegen v. U.S., CIT # 21-00080).