An Indian exporter of granular polytetrafluorethylene, the generic version of Teflon, said March 27 that the “minute” amount of wind energy produced by an affiliate was not “primarily directed” at its own own PTFE manufacturing because electricity from certain sources can't be earmarked for any particular process (Gujarat Fluorochemicals v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1268).
Court of International Trade activity
The U.S. on March 25 supported the Commerce Department’s voluntary remand results that used an Italian steel exporter’s quarterly costs methodology to calculate its steel’s value and assigned the exporter a de minimis rate (Officine Tecnosider SRL v. U.S., CIT # 23-00001).
The Court of International Trade on March 26 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in the 2020-21 antidumping duty review on hot-rolled steel flat products from Japan. Judge Stephen Vaden said that since no party contests the remand results, which were voluntarily requested by Commerce so the agency could treat exporter Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co. as a mandatory respondent, the case is upheld (Optima Steel International v. U.S., CIT # 23-00108).
The U.S. brought a customs penalty suit against importer E-Dong U.S.A. for failure to pay federal excise tax on entries of soju bottles from South Korea. Filing a complaint March 28 at the Court of International Trade, the government said that the company entered the soju, a Korean spirit, via "material or false statement" by failing to reference any of the owed excise tax (U.S. v. E-Dong, U.S.A., CIT # 24-00066).
During oral arguments March 26 for weekly and monthly planner classification case, Court of International Trade Judge Jane Restani told parties that the Harmonized Tariff Schedule is written in British, not American, English (Blue Sky The Color of Imagination v. U.S., CIT # 21-00624).
The Court of International Trade on April 1 lifted a temporary ban on nine fish types from New Zealand after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made new comparability findings regarding the wildlife protections on New Zealand's West Coast North Island inshore trawl and set net fisheries. The ban's lifting, which went unopposed by all parties, came after NOAA said that New Zealand established that its fisheries satisfy the provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The suit was brought by conservation groups seeking to protect the Maui dolphin.
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department "abused its discretion" by using a "bright-line rule to reject" Jindal Poly Films' Section III affiliation questionnaire in the 2021 countervailing duty administrative review on polyethylene terephthalate film, sheet and strip from India, the exporter charged in a complaint filed at the Court of International Trade March 27 (Jindal Poly Films v. U.S., CIT # 24-00053).
The Court of International Trade reassigned 27 cases from various judges to new Judges Joseph Laroski and Lisa Wang. Chief Judge Mark Barnett reassigned 17 cases from Judges Claire Kelly, Timothy Reif, Jennifer Choe-Groves, Timothy Stanceu, Gary Katzmann, Leo Gordon, M. Miller Baker and Richard Eaton to Laroski, and 10 cases from Kelly, Reif, Katzmann, Gordon, Eaton and Thomas Aquilino to Wang.
A petitioner submitted its final brief March 25 opposing the Commerce Department’s continued use of India as a surrogate for Vietnam in its review of an antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets. It argued that Commerce was mixing up the definitions of “same” and “comparable” in its surrogate selection process (Catfish Farmers of America v. U.S., CIT # 21-00380).