The Court of International Trade on May 20 entered stipulated judgment in a pair of customs suits brought by Home Depot U.S.A., lowering the duty rate on the retail giant's imported residential door knobs packaged with at least one deadbolt, from 5.7% to 3.9% (Home Depot U.S.A. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 14-00122, -00123).
Court of International Trade activity
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on May 20 ruled that the Court of International Trade was wrong to establish a 50% threshold when determining whether demand for an agricultural product is "substantially dependent" on its raw upstream iteration for purposes of assigning countervailing duties. Judges Sharon Prost, William Bryson and Leonard Stark said the Commerce Department has significant leeway in determining whether substantial dependence exists. In the present case, which assessed subsidies to Spanish raw olive growers, the court affirmed Commerce's finding of substantial dependence, finding that errors in the agency's analysis of dependence were nonprejudicial to the affected Spanish ripe olive exporters.
AD petitioners Bio-Lab, Innovative Water Care and Occidental Chemical Corporation merged their challenge to an antidumping duty review on chlorinated isocyanurates from China at the Court of International Trade with a similar challenge from Juancheng Kangtai Chemical Co. and Heze Huayi Chemical Co. (Bio-Lab, et al. v. United States, CIT # 24-00024) (Juancheng Kangtai Chemical Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00026).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade on May 16 said that the Commerce Department lawfully excluded imports from non-market economy and export-subsidizing countries from the datasets it used when calculating input cost of production and market price under the major input and transactions disregarded rules.
The Court of International Trade on May 16 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping duty investigation of mattresses from Cambodia. Judge Gary Katzmann said Commerce, under both its major input and transactions disregarded rules, properly picked Cambodia as the "market under consideration" and appropriately excluded imports from nonmarket economy and export-subsidizing countries from the datasets it used when calculating input cost of production and market price. Katzmann also upheld Commerce's averaging of financial statements from Indian mattress-maker Emriates Sleep Systems and Grand Twins International (Cambodia) "for calculating constructed value profit and selling expenses."
A pair of exporters shouldn't be allowed to pluck "a few words out of context without examining the full language of that scope" in their challenge to a Commerce Department ruling that steel truck wheels made in Thailand with either Chinese-origin rims or discs are subject to the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on steel wheels from China (Asia Wheel Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 23-00143).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on May 15 said the scope of the antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Thailand unambiguously includes dual-stenciled pipe, reversing the Court of International Trade's decision.
Court of International Trade Chief Judge Mark Barnett appointed Cassidy Levy's Thomas Beline to be chair of the court's advisory committee, the court announced May 14. The committee's 20 members are lawyers from DOJ and in private practice. The group studies the court's rules of practice and procedures, and recommends improvements.