The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's final results in the antidumping duty investigation of certain quartz surface products from China, in Sept. 24 opinion. Judge Leo Gordon upheld Commerce's selection of Mexico as the primary surrogate country over Malaysia for the purposes of calculating normal value. Seeing as the plaintiffs needed to prove that Malaysia was the "one and only reasonable surrogate country selection" in order for the court to justify the switch, Gordon ruled in favor of Commerce since the plaintiffs failed to make this demonstration, the opinion said.
Court of International Trade activity
The Commerce Department cannot make a particular market situation adjustment in the sales-below-cost test when calculating normal value, the Court of International Trade again ruled in a Sept. 23 opinion. Pointing to multiple CIT rulings reaching the same conclusion (see 2107210065), Judge Gary Katzmann said that since the statute in one section has language permitting a PMS adjustment but excludes it in the section on normal value adjustments, Commerce could not make the PMS adjustment. Katzmann also said that even if such an adjustment were allowed, Commerce did not provide enough evidence that a PMS existed.
The Labor Department's decision to continue to find that a unionized group of former AT&T call center employees are not entitled to trade adjustment assistance for outsourced jobs gives a "half-baked analysis" of the situation, the workers said in a Sept. 20 filing at the Court of International Trade. The plaintiffs accused the agency of failing to ever fully grapple with contradicting evidence on the record in its remand results (Communications Workers of America Local 4123, on behalf of Former Employees of AT&T Services, Inc. v. United States Secretary of Labor, CIT #20-00075).
The International Trade Commission ignored that the domestic tire industry was profitable when it made its determination that passenger vehicle and light truck tires from South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam were harming the domestic industry, plaintiffs led by Sentury Tire (Thailand) Co. said in a Sept. 17 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Sentury also argued that the commission failed to properly consider the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the domestic industry (Sentury Tire (Thailand) Co. Ltd., et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00439).
The Court of International Trade remanded the Commerce Department's final results in an antidumping duty administrative review that made a particular market situation adjustment to the cost of production in a sales-below-cost test in a Sept. 23 order. Judge Gary Katzmann said that the statute does not permit PMS adjustment to sales-below-cost tests when calculating normal value. The ruling came in a case brought by mandatory respondents HiSteel and Kukje, which challenged an administrative review of the antidumping duty order on heavy walled rectangular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from South Korea.
The Court of International Trade sustained the International Trade Commission's final negative injury determination in its antidumping and countervailing duty investigation of fabricated structural steel from Canada, China and Mexico, in a Sept. 22 confidential opinion. Judge Claire Kelly handed down the result, and plans to publish the public opinion on Sept. 30, she said in a letter to the litigants. The parties have until Sept. 29 to review information that's not already bracketed that should be bracketed and the already-bracketed information to make sure no confidential information is released to the public (Full Member Subgroup of the American Institute of Steel Construction, LLC v. United States, CIT #20-00090).
The Commerce Department's mandatory respondent selection process in a countervailing duty case on wood flooring resembled "Russian roulette" due to fundamental errors in the CBP data used to make the respondent picks, plaintiffs in a case at the Court of International Trade said in four briefs (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co., Ltd., et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #20-03885).
Untethering the six-year statute of limitations for customs bonds from the date an entry is liquidated would impair the ability of customs sureties to function, and CBP’s attempt to collect on a bond issued by Aegis Security Insurance eight years after liquidation is an unreasonable delay that would cause real harm to the surety, Aegis said in a brief filed Sept. 16 at the Court of International Trade.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
LG Electronics, and its U.S. affiliate, launched a case at the Court of International Trade against the International Trade Commission for freezing out certain members of its counsel from a safeguard extension proceeding on solar panels, in a Sept. 16 complaint. The ITC did not grant full access to proprietary information for all of LGE's legal team, from the firm Curtis Mallet-Prevost, due to the lawyers' roles in representing China in a dispute settlement case at the World Trade Organization (LG Electronics USA, Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT 21-00520).