International trade attorney Stephen Morrison has joined Wiley Rein as an associate, departing Morris Manning after joining the firm in August 2023 (see 2308100043), according to his LinkedIn page. Morrison previously served as a law clerk at the Court of International Trade, 2021-2023.
Court of International Trade activity
The Court of International Trade on May 30 rejected the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available against Apiario Diamante Comercial Exportadora and Apiario Diamante Producao e Comercial de Mel, collectively doing business as Supermel, in the antidumping duty investigation on raw honey from Brazil. The decision sends back the 83.72% AD rate levied against the exporter.
The Court of International Trade on May 31 said that a duty drawback claim becomes deemed liquidated after one year if the underlying import entries are also liquidated and final, with finality defined as the end of the 180-day window in which to file a protest with CBP.
The Court of International Trade on May 31 sustained parts and remanded parts of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on mobile access equipment from China. Judge M. Miller Baker sent back Commerce's surrogate value data on ocean-shipping costs for respondent Zhejiang Dingli Machinery Co., which was taken from Descartes, Freightos and Drewry, along with the SV data for minor fabricated steel components. However, Baker sustained Commerce's surrogate value picks related to two of Dingli's motor inputs. The court also said Commerce appropriately accepted certain factual information submissions from Dingli, despite the submissions violating the agency's regulations, since it was the only chance for Dingli to rebut the SV data on the record.
The Court of International Trade on May 31 said that duty drawback claims are deemed liquidated after one year, as long as the underlying import entries are liquidated and final, and that "finality" is defined as the end of the 180-day protest window for the underlying entry. As a result of this clarification, Judge Jane Restani granted one of importer Performance Additives' duty drawback claims on its polymer and plastic chemical entries. The other claim's entries weren't liquidated and final on its one-year anniversary, precluding deemed liquidation.
The Court of International Trade on May 30 remanded the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available against Apiario Diamante Comercial Exportadora and Apiario Diamante Producao e Comercial de Mel, collectively doing business as Supermel, in the antidumping duty investigation on raw honey from Brazil. Judge Timothy Stanceu said that minor discrepancies between data submitted from small, unaffiliated beekeeper suppliers and the data submitted by Supermel isn't a valid reason to not use the exporter's acquisition costs as a proxy for the actual cost of production data. In addition, the court rejected Commerce's claim that Supermel's responses to five of the agency's questions were deficient, finding that the "principal information that Commerce found Supermel to have withheld was provided in full" by the company.
CBP continued to find that three importers evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood from China on remand at the Court of International Trade, after providing the companies with access to the confidential information in the Enforce and Protect Act proceeding (American Pacific Plywood v. U.S., CIT # 20-03914).
Importer Wagner Spray Tech. Corp. told the Court of International Trade that the Commerce Department impermissibly used (k)(1) sources to expand the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China when it included the company's finished heat sink manifold under the AD/CVD orders (Wagner Spray Tech. Corp. v. United States, CIT # 23-00241).
The U.S. said May 28 that service through a German exporter’s U.S. counsel of record in another case was adequate under the trade court’s rules of civil procedure (U.S. v. Koehler Oberkirch, CIT # 24-00014).
The Canadian government and a group of eight Canadian lumber exporters sought to file an amici curiae brief in a case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on the Commerce Department's use of the Cohen's d test to detect "masked" dumping. Filing unopposed for leave to file the briefs on May 28, the parties said they can provide "unique and robust explanations of the Cohen's d denominator, a full understanding of which will" aid the court to settle the issues in the case (Mid Continent Steel & Wire v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1556).