Russian steel importer NLMK's lawsuit against U.S. Steel alleging the Pittsburgh-based company misled the Commerce Department when it objected to NLMK's Section 232 exclusion requests will stay in Pennsylvania federal court, per an Aug. 19 ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Judge William Stickman IV denied NLMK's motion to keep the case in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, where it was originally filed, finding that the case raises federal issues including recreating Commerce's thought process in examining the exclusion requests (NLMK Pennsylvania, LLC, et al. v. United States Steel Corporation, W.D. Pa. #21-00273).
The Commerce Department properly held that three companies owned by the same, although estranged, family are not affiliated for purposes of collapsing the entities in an antidumping case, the Court of International Trade said in an Aug. 20 opinion. The agency's contention that the companies did not clear any of the three standards for collapsing multiple companies for purposes of calculating a dumping margin was proper, Judge Gary Katzmann ruled.
Washington state-based importer Keirton USA filed a complaint in the Court of International Trade on Aug. 19 after the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington found that the trade court was the case's proper jurisdictional home. Keirton, a self-described importer of "agricultural equipment used to process cannabis and other farm goods, including hemp and kale" is challenging CBP's deemed exclusions of shipments of such machinery as "drug paraphernalia" (Keirton USA, Inc. v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CIT #21-00452).
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping duty case over the question of whether to "collapse" affiliate entities since they were owned by members of the "same, albeit estranged, family." In an Aug. 20 opinion, Judge Gary Katzmann held that Commerce properly reversed its original determination that the three companies were affiliated, since they did not clear the three requirements for collapsing given entities. In doing so, Commerce dropped its application of adverse facts available and gave Echjay Forgings Private Limited a 4.58% dumping margin.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Aug. 17 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The Court of International Trade created an “impermissible distinction” under customs valuation law between goods from non-market and market economies when it denied importer Meyer Corp. first sale valuation, the importer argued in an Aug. 9 opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Kicking off litigation in the much-anticipated appeal proceedings, Meyer argued against the alleged impermissibility of CIT's first sale rejection and for its qualifications for the special valuation status (Meyer Corporation, U.S. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1932).
The Commerce Department's remand results following an opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over an antidumping duty administrative review should be remanded yet again, mandatory respondent Bosun Tools Co. said in comments at the Court of International Trade. Commerce should have applied neutral facts available instead of adverse facts available when weighing Bosun's country of origin information using a first-in-first-out (FIFO) methodology, Bosun said. Even if this use of AFA is sustained, it should be limited to missing information and not applied to the U.S. sales prices for reported-FIFO sales, as Commerce did, Bosun suggested (Diamond Sawblades Manufacturers' Coalition v. United States, CIT #17-00167).
Antidumping petitioner U.S. Steel Corporation and the two mandatory respondents in the contested antidumping duty review, SeAH Steel Co. and NEXTEEL Co., submitted their comments on the Commerce Department's remand results at the Court of International Trade. U.S. Steel spoke out against Commerce's flip on its finding of a particular market situation for South Korean steel while the respondents argued against the agency's reallocation of suspended product line and inventory valuation losses to general and administrative expenses and Commerce's decision to deduct a portion of SeAH's G&A expenses of a U.S. affiliate for further manufacturing costs (SeAH Steel Co. v. United States, CIT #19-00086).