CIT Upholds Commerce's Reversal on Retroactive Imposition of AD/CV Duties After Scope Ruling

The Court of International Trade sustained Nov. 18 the Commerce Department's remand results in a case involving a scope revision in an antidumping and countervailing duty investigation on steel trailer wheels from China. After previously sustaining the scope revision itself but remanding the retroactive imposition of the duties on subject merchandise, Judge Gary Katzmann then sustained Commerce's redetermination after it dropped the retroactive duties.

Importer Trans Texas Tire and foreign supplier Zhejiang Jingu Co. Ltd. brought the cases, contesting a scope ruling that included steel trailer wheels coated in chrome through a physical vapor deposition process under the AD/CVD orders on steel trailer wheels. In both CIT challenges to the AD and CVD cases, Katzmann upheld Commerce's scope determination, finding that the agency's decision to include the PVD chrome wheels in the steal trailer wheel orders was a permissible clarification of the scope. The judge also held that the scope change was consistent with the petition's original intent (see 2105180062).

Katzmann, however, held that Commerce unlawfully imposed the duties on PVD chrome wheels back to the original suspension of liquidation on the date Commerce issued its preliminary determination. The judge said that Commerce failed to give adequate notice upon the initiation of the AD/CVD proceedings that PVD chrome wheels would not qualify for the previously granted exclusion for steel trailer wheels coated in chrome.

(Trans Texas Tire, LLC v. U.S., Slip Op. 21-157, CIT # 19-00188, -00189, dated 11/18/21, Judge Gary Katzmann; Attorneys: Jordan Kahn of Grunfeld Desiderio for plaintiff Trans Texas Tire LLC; Ting-Ting Kao of White & Case for consolidated plaintiff Zhejiang Jingu; Ashley Akers of DOJ for defendant U.S. government; Nicholas Birch of Schagrin Associates for defendant-intervenor Dexstar Wheel)