The Commerce Department made no changes to subsidy rates calculated for the countervailing duty investigation of phosphate fertilizers from Russia, according to remand results it submitted to the Court of International Trade on Oct. 11 (The Mosaic Company v. U.S., CIT # 21-00117).
Trade lawyers and importers are wondering how the anti-stockpiling element of a two-year pause on trade remedy circumvention deposits will be enforced.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Canadian exporter Midwest-CBK filed a consent motion seeking to dismiss its case on whether sales from a Canadian warehouse to U.S. customers are "sales for export to the U.S." or "domestic sales." The exporter said it "will not be able to provide further evidence" on the second phase of the litigation, which "would allow for determination of a dutiable value based on the "[Free on Board] Buffalo, New York" prices at which the company sold its imports to its U.S. customers. The company wants the issue resolved so it can "further the case's other issues on appeal" (Midwest-CBK v. U.S., CIT # 17-00154).
The Commerce Department didn't properly support its de jure specificity finding regarding a Chinese tax program that makes a resident enterprise's income derived from investment gains in another resident enterprise tax-exempt, the Court of International Trade ruled in an Oct. 11 opinion. Judge Jane Restani said the program, established under Article 26(2) of China's Enterprise Income Tax Law, is not tied to a specific enterprise or industry and thus fails the specificity analysis.
The Supreme Court should take up a case on whether President Donald Trump lawfully expanded Section 232 steel and aluminum duties to cover "derivative" products to decide how separation-of-powers principles apply to statutory interpretations delegating vast legislative power to the executive, petitioner PrimeSource Building Products argued. Filing a brief in response to the government's defense, PrimeSource claimed that its case gives the court a chance to "do something about" the government's position that the executive can exercise both Congress' legislative powers and the judiciary's "interpretive responsibilities" (PrimeSource Building Products v. United States, Sup. Ct. # 23-69).
The Court of International Trade on Oct. 11 remanded the antidumping duty investigation on wind towers from Spain for the second time. Judge Timothy Stanceu said that after individually investigating exporter Siemens Gamesa on the first remand, Commerce illegally levied a 73% adverse facts available rate on the company after collapsing it with affiliated supplier Windar Renovables and five of Windar's subsidiaries. Commerce unlawfully relied on the conclusion that the 73% AFA rate on Windar set in the original AD investigation was final and controlling and improperly used AFA on Siemens Gamesa given the record evidence, Stanceu said.
Four Canadian lumber exporters, along with their cross-owned affiliates, referred to as the "Originally Excluded Parties," asked the Court of International Trade to relieve them from the effects of a court order reinstating the countervailing duty order on softwood lumber products from Canada. The originally excluded parties said the order was based on an earlier judgment, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed, concerning the legal ground for conducting expedited CVD reviews, meaning that the trade court should restore "the status quo ante that existed prior" to the order for the remainder of the case (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 19-00122).
The U.S. must further explain its decision not to add certain documents to the record in a case on the National Marine Fisheries Service's rejection of importer Southern Cross Seafoods' application for preapproval to import Chilean sea bass, the Court of International Trade ruled. Judge Timothy Reif said in an Oct. 5 opinion made public Oct. 10 that the government must address inconsistencies in its reasons for not including information showing how the NMFS obtained outside legal opinions included in the administrative record and information identifying who authored a relevant legal opinion.
The use of adverse facts in an administrative review of the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China, and the resulting recalculation of rates for separate rate companies, were unlawful and inconsistent with the facts, a group of separate rate respondents led by Jiangsu Guyu International Trading (Jiangsu) said in their Oct. 5 remand comments to the Court of International Trade. Commerce deviated from its established practice when it assigned a separate rate to Jinlong and so it should similarly deviate in recalculating the average rate assigned to the non-individually reviewed companies, Jiangsu said (American Manufacturers of Multilayered Wood Flooring v. U.S., CIT # 21-00595)