The antidumping and countervailing duties that importer Fedmet Resources now has to pay as a result of a CBP duty evasion ruling amounts to an "embargo" and deprives Fedmet of market access, the importer argued in a Nov. 19 brief at the Court of International Trade. Further, CBP violated Fedmet's due process rights by not even notifying the importer of the existence of the investigation until the interim measures were put in place and not giving it an opportunity to respond to evidence against it, the brief said (Fedmet Resources Corporation v. United States, CIT #21-00248).
The Court of International Trade should sustain the Commerce Department's reversion to its initial decision to adjust a Turkish pipe exporter's post-sale price by only one-third of a late delivery penalty in an antidumping duty investigation, both the plaintiff, Borusan Mannemsann, and the antidumping petitioners said. However, the sides were divided over what to do about Commerce's failure to address Borusan's date of sale, with Borusan simply calling for CIT to sustain the results and the petitioners calling for another remand to address the sale date issue (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. v. U.S., CIT Consol. #19-00056).
The Commerce Department erred in using the Cohen's d test to identify potential masked dumping in an antidumping investigation, Ashley Furniture argued in a Nov. 19 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade. Tapping a recent Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit opinion that questioned the validity of the standardized mean difference test, Ashley Furniture argued that Commerce's use of the test in the AD investigation into welded line pipe from South Korea rests on the same faulty assumptions that the Federal Circuit already rejected (Ashley Furniture Industries, LLC, et al. v. United States, CIT #32-00283).
The Department of Justice urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to uphold a lower court ruling denying a group of domestic steel manufacturers the right to intervene in Section 232 exclusion denial cases, in a Nov. 17 brief, arguing that none of the producers has a legally protectable interest in the proceedings. DOJ said that the steel makers' economic interests are insufficient to warrant intervention in the cases since they are "indirect and contingent," seeing as the companies argue that their interest in the exclusions derives from "sales opportunities."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a notice of noncompliance Nov. 15 to counsel for the U.S. government in a case involving Section 232 duties. The notice said only one attorney may serve as principal counsel for each party. Two Department of Justice attorneys, Stephen Tosini and Kyle Beckrich, currently are listed in the docket as counsel for the U.S., with both marked to receive notice. Tosini is listed as the lead counsel and Beckrich as the counsel of record. The Federal Circuit said that "a party's failure to timely file a corrected document curing all defects identified on this notice may result in this document being stricken (PrimeSource Building Products, Inc. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. , #21-2066).
The Supreme Court of the U.S. may hear an appeal of the key Transpacific Steel LLC v. United States decision, seeing it as an opportunity to discuss the question of the extent to which Congress delegated tariff powers to the president, Julie Mendoza of Morris Manning, counsel to plaintiff-appellee Borusan Mannesmann, told Trade Law Daily. Having recently petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case, Mendoza said that having the case sit in front of the nation's highest court will also give her and her team a chance to argue that the most recent decision in the case runs afoul of the intelligible principle standard for delegation of powers to the president as it relates to Section 232.
In remand results filed at the Court of International Trade, the Commerce Department continued to find that antidumping respondent Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. has failed to establish its eligibility for a separate rate, making it part of the China-wide entity, and that the application of Commerce's non-market economy definition to Jinqiao Flooring was reasonable. The remand results relied heavily on a June U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case, China Manufacturers Alliance v. U.S., which established that China-wide rates can still be based on adverse facts available even if no members of the country-wide entity were found to be uncooperative (Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co., Ltd., v. United States, CIT #18-00191).
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The Commerce Department further defended its decision to continue relying on facts otherwise available in Nov. 8 comments submitted to the Court of International Trade, despite a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit opinion finding that such reliance on the current data was inappropriate. The plaintiff in the case, Dillinger France, argued that Commerce ignored the Federal Circuit's directive by continuing to rely on the "likely selling prices" in Dillinger France's records rather than the actual cost of production. Commerce responded that the plaintiff failed to submit the actual product-specific costs of producing the non-prime products or the physical characteristics of the non-prime products, leading to no other choice but to use facts otherwise available (Dillinger France S.A. v. United States, CIT #17-00159).
President Joe Biden nominated Judge Leonard Stark of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Stark, who served as the Delaware District's chief judge 2014 to 2021, would replace current Federal Circuit Judge Kathleen O'Malley, who announced that she would retire next March. Stark would be the president's second appointment to the Federal Circuit, after the Senate confirmed Tiffany Cunningham to the appellate court in July. Before joining the Delaware District Court in 2010, Stark was a U.S. magistrate judge for the District of Delaware, and before that, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware.