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.
Court of Federal Appeals Trade activity
The Coalition of Freight Coupler Producers refiled a motion to waive the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's redaction limits in a conflict-of-interest proceeding after the court rejected an initial bid to waive the requirements. The coalition asked the court for permission to redact 180 unique words, given that the reasons for redaction are rooted in existing judicial orders and the law, "are narrowly tailored toward" three groups of information grounded in the law and the redaction would not "frustrate the public policy regarding confidentiality in proceedings" at the Federal Circuit (Amsted Rail Company v. ITC, Fed. Cir. # 23-1355).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted a U.S. motion for 4,000 more words to file in its reply brief in an appeal of the Commerce Department's finding that Vandewater International's steel branch outlets are within the scope of an antidumping duty order on butt-weld pipe fittings. The government said it needs 18,000 words to address the "volume of information and arguments in the two opening briefs" (see 2304120044). The other parties in the appeal consented to the request (Vandewater International v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1093).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed the briefing schedule in a countervailing duty case to consider a motion from Spanish olive growers to enlarge their reply brief by 1,500 words. The olive growers, led by Asociacion de Exportadores e Industrialies de Aceitunas de Mesa, asked for the additional words due to the "complexity of the issues presented in this appeal and the fact-specific nature of the arguments raised by the other parties." The case concerns whether the Commerce Department properly made its "substantially dependent finding" in the Spanish olives CVD investigation (see 2303280063) (Asociacion de Exportadores e Industriales de Aceitunas de Mesa v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1162).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated April 14 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 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed the briefing schedule in two cases on the Commerce Department's scope ruling excluding certain door thresholds from the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, pending resolution of a motion to consolidate the appeals. Both cases were appealed by the Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee. In the cases, which were not consolidated at the Court of International Trade, Commerce said door thresholds from Worldwide Door Components and Columbia Aluminum Products qualified for the finished merchandise exclusion. The trade court sustained this finding (Worldwide Door Components v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1532, and Columbia Aluminum Products v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1534).
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 substituted its own judgment for the Commerce Department's when it overruled the agency's rejection of antidumping duty respondent Z.A. Sea Foods' (ZASF's) Vietnamese sales as third country sales in an AD review on frozen warmwater shrimp from India, AD petitioner Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Action Committee argued in its opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Z.A. Sea Foods Private Ltd. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1469).
Net wraps used for bailing hay are properly classified as warp knit fabric under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 6005.39.00, the DOJ argued in an April 10 opening brief filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. RKW Klerks appealed the Court of International Trade's Oct. 4 decision that held that the net wraps are warp knit fabric rather than RKW's preferred classification as "parts of agricultural machines" under HTS subheading 8433.90.50 (see 2210050032) (RKW Klerks v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1210).
The Commerce Department illegally found that steel plate cost fluctuations in the production of utility scale wind towers were unrelated to the physical characteristics of the finished wind towers, antidumping duty respondent Dongkuk S&C Co. argued in an opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. While Commerce said its decision to weight-average Dongkuk's reported steel plate costs for all reported control numbers (CONNUMs) was needed to "mitigate the cost differences unrelated to the product physical characteristics," Dongkuk said this approach was not backed by enough evidence (Dongkuk S&C Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1419).