The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 8 opinion rejected a motion from the U.S. seeking to retract the court's public opinion sustaining an affirmative injury finding from the International Trade Commission and to bracket information the government said was confidential. Touting the need for transparency in the court system, Judge Stephen Vaden said that the information the government sought to redact -- certain company names and numerical approximations -- is not confidential because the ITC failed to properly bracket it during litigation or the information is publicly available. The judge noted that neither "administrative agencies nor this Court can hide from scrutiny by censoring information," adding that only "truly confidential" information may be hidden from the public.
Court of International Trade activity
Parties in a case on the 2020 countervailing duty review on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey disagreed on the impact of the Court of International Trade's ruling in a separate suit concerning the 2018 review of the same CVD order. Filing a joint status report to the trade court on Jan. 8, the U.S. and exporter Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret said no consensus has been reached and "none of the parties have changed their position," though Kaptan said the court's decision "dictates the outcome of this proceeding given virtually identical facts" (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 22-00149).
Antidumping petitioner Mid Continent Steel & Wire will appeal a January Court of International Trade decision sustaining the sixth AD review of steel nails from Oman in which the Commerce Department dropped its use of adverse facts available against exporter Oman Fasteners (see 2401050018). As stated in a notice of appeal, the petitioner will take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The notice of appeal was filed before a public version of the trade court's decision was released (Oman Fasteners v. U.S., CIT # 22-00348).
The Commerce Department on remand altered its analysis on whether an additional allotment of traceable carbon emissions credits in South Korea constituted a financial contribution. Submitting remand results to the Court of International Trade on Jan. 5, Commerce said that the South Korean government's decision to distribute additional free allowances of carbon emissions credits constitutes a "direct transfer of funds," rather than revenue forgone by the foreign government (Hyundai Steel Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00170).
Exporter SeAH Steel VINA Corp. filed a trio of complaints at the Court of International Trade on Jan. 5 to contest the Commerce Department's finding that pipes and tubes it exports from Vietnam, made using hot-rolled steel from China, South Korea and India, are circumventing antidumping duty orders on steel pipes from those three countries (SeAH Steel VINA Corp. v. U.S. , CIT # 23-00256, -00257, -00258).
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 5 issued a confidential opinion sustaining the sixth antidumping duty review on steel nails from Oman. Oman Fasteners brought suit to contest the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available against the exporter for supposedly failing to submit all of its responses to Commerce's supplemental questionnaire by the deadline (Oman Fasteners v. U.S., CIT # 22-00348).
The Commerce Department has not established an "irrebuttable presumption" of state control for exporters in nonmarket economies, antidumping duty petitioner the United Steelworkers labor union argued in a Jan. 5 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Pirelli Tyre Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2266).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 5 granted a motion to dismiss an appeal of a countervailing duty suit from the U.S. and petitioner Nucor Corp. The court lifted the stay in the case and dismissed the case after also considering the "non-participation" of exporters POSCO and Hyundai Steel Co. and the South Korean government (POSCO v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-1576).
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. swapped its principal counsel in an antidumping and countervailing duty scope case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concerning importer Siffron's plastic shelf dividers. In a notice of substitution Jan. 3, the government said Christopher Berridge, DOJ trial attorney in the Commercial Litigation Branch, will replace Daniel Roland. In the case, the Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's exclusion of Siffron's dividers from the AD/CVD orders on raw flexible magnets from China (see 2309260049) (Magnum Magnetics Corp. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1164).