The Commerce Department reasonably rejected United Nations Comtrade and Eurostat data on natural gas imports from Russia when spurning the use of a tier-two benchmark for its less than adequate remuneration of a countervailing duty respondent's natural gas purchase prices, the Court of International Trade said. Further, Judge Gary Katzmann ruled that the agency properly denied the use of Eurostat natural gas import data from Norway, Algeria, Libya and Ukraine in a tier-three benchmark calculation, while reasonably selecting International Energy Agency (IEA) data for the benchmark.
Court of International Trade activity
A motion for judgment submitted by plaintiff Fujian Yinfeng Imp & Exp Trading Co. was rejected by the Court of International Trade's Judge M. Miller Baker on Aug. 17 due to a failure to comply with formatting requirements. In a notice from the court, Baker said that the motion was rejected since it failed to include a glossary of case-specific acronyms and abbreviations. The corrected document was instructed to be refiled by Aug. 25 (Fujian Yinfeng Imp & Exp Trading Co., Ltd. v. U.S., CIT #21-00088).
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Aug. 19 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
The Court of International Trade created an “impermissible distinction” under customs valuation law between goods from non-market and market economies when it denied importer Meyer Corp. first sale valuation, the importer argued in an Aug. 9 opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Kicking off litigation in the much-anticipated appeal proceedings, Meyer argued against the alleged impermissibility of CIT's first sale rejection and for its qualifications for the special valuation status (Meyer Corporation, U.S. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1932).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department will reconsider its application of the major input rule, treatment of certain general and administrative expenses and its use of adverse facts available in an antidumping duty case, according to two Aug. 18 Court of International Trade opinions. After remanding the case once before, Judge Leo Gordon remanded certain elements of the results yet again, but did sustain certain parts of Commerce's reconsideration, including its differential pricing analysis and adjustment of interest expenses to include a portion of the respondent's parent holding company's interest expense.
The U.S. Court of International Trade, per an order Aug. 18, scheduled a status conference in the Section 301 litigation for 10 a.m. on Sept. 1, two days before CBP is required to create a repository for importers to request liquidation suspensions of customs entries from China with lists 3 or 4A tariff exposure. The court has extended the deadline three times since ordering CBP to establish the repository in its July 6 preliminary injunction order (see 2108170049). The plaintiffs’ steering committee and the Department of Justice negotiated agreements on some previously contested terms for setting up the repository but are still far apart on others.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade vacated a Commerce Department regulation establishing expedited reviews for countervailing duty investigations in an Aug. 18 opinion. Chief Judge Mark Barnett, after issuing three other opinions in the case, upheld Commerce's finding that it couldn't find any alternative statutory basis on which to find that the regulation can exist. Barnett also nixed the expedited CVD reviews provided to some Canadian companies relating to the CVD order on certain softwood lumber from Canada. In doing so, Barnett ruled that companies deemed excluded from the CVD order due to the expedited reviews shall prospectively be reinstated as subject to it. Commerce shall also impose a cash deposit requirement based on the all-others rate from the investigation or the company-specific rate determined in the most recently completed administrative review in which the company was reviewed, Barnett said.
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's final results in a countervailing duty administrative review on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey in an Aug. 18 opinion. Judge Gary Katzmann ruled against plaintiff Habas Sinai ve Tibbi Gazlar Istihsal Endustrisi's motion for judgment, holding that Commerce permissibly rejected United Nations Comtrade and Eurostat data on natural gas imports from Russia in calculating a "tier-two benchmark" in its sales-below-cost analysis of Habas' natural gas prices. Katzmann also held that Commerce reasonably refused to use the Eurostat natural gas import data from Norway, Alberia, Libya and Ukraine in its "tier-three benchmark" calculations, while properly relying on IEA data for the tier-three calculations.