The Court of International Trade in a Nov. 15 judgment dismissed Amsted Rail's conflict-of-interest case against its former counsel for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Concurrently filing a confidential opinion but a public order, Judge Gary Katzmann said the plaintiffs can refile under Section 1581(c). The case was originally filed under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction (Amsted Rail v. U.S., CIT #22-00307).

The Commerce Department stuck by its use of a simple average in the denominatory calculation of the Cohen's d coefficient -- a part of the test to root out "masked" dumping -- in Nov. 10 remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade. Responding to an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit telling the agency to justify its departure from the academic literature about how to calculate the Cohen's d denominator, Commerce said that the literature actually supports the use of a simple average when sampling is not used (Mid Continent Steel & Wire v. United States, CIT Consol. #15-00213).

Russia will no longer be considered a market economy in antidumping duty investigations, which will likely cause future AD rates to rise for some Russian companies and rates to be set higher in AD duty orders issued for the country going forward.

The Court of International Trade does not have jurisdiction under 19 U.S.C. Section 1581(i) -- the court's "residual" jurisdiction -- to hear a case over whether former counsel for Amsted Rail Co. should be barred from certain antidumping and countervailing proceedings, the U.S. told the court. Concurrently filing an opposition to ARC's motion for a preliminary injunction, which would bar ARC's former counsel, Daniel Pickard and law firm Buchanan Ingersoll, from participating in the proceedings, and a motion to dismiss, the U.S. said that the court does not have jurisdiction to hear the case and that the plaintiffs are not likely to succeed in the matter (Amsted Rail Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00316).

Antidumping petitioner Ellwood City Co. failed to preserve its objection to the Commerce Department's use of a questionnaire in light of on-site verification by not exhausting administrative remedies, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Nov. 8 opinion. Judge Stephen Vaden said Ellwood City had many chances to object to the verification methodology in the AD investigation, but it never did. However, the case was remanded to Commerce over defendant-intervenor and AD respondent BGH Edelstahl Siegen's challenge to Commerce's use of a particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test.

The Court of International Trade properly classified knit gloves under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 6116, the U.S. argued in a Nov. 7 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The heading provides for "[g]loves, mittens and mitts, knitted or crocheted" and is "sufficiently broad" to include knit gloves. The plaintiff-appellant, Magid Glove, puts forth a host of "inconsistent and unpersuasive arguments" to vie for classification under HTS heading 3926, which provides for "[o]ther articles of plastics," the brief said (Magid Glove & Safety Manufacturing Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1793).

The Court of International Trade should give the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration a voluntary remand in a case seeking a Marine Mammal Protection Act ban on imports of fish and fishery products from New Zealand caught using techniques that allegedly have caused the near extinction of the Maui dolphin, the U.S. argued in a Nov. 8 motion. The voluntary remand would let the NOAA "amend the current comparability findings for certain New Zealand fisheries whose expiration dates conform with the deadlines set forth for other comparability findings to be issued under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and 50 C.F.R. § 216.24(h)," the government said (Sea Shepherd New Zealand v. United States, CIT #20-00112).

The rehearing motion from plaintiffs in an antidumping duty case, led by Ellwood City Forge, "appears to be little more than an impermissible attempt to relitigate an argument" already dispatched by the Court of International Trade, Judge Stephen Vaden held in a Nov. 8 opinion. Ellwood City sought reconsideration of the court's order tossing the challenge to the Commerce Department's failure to conduct on-site verification during an antidumping review, given that the plaintiffs failed to broach the topic administratively. Vaden said that Ellwood City misunderstood "the nexus between futility" and the requirement to exhaust administrative remedies.

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Arguments from plaintiffs in the massive Section 301 litigation against the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's remand submission at the Court of International Trade lack merit and reveal a "misunderstanding of judicial remands," the U.S. argued in a Nov. 4 brief defending the remand results. The plaintiffs said that USTR cannot take another look at the record to defend its tariff action under Section 301 from public comments and can only "parrot existing statements" on the record. The government said that this view is not compatible with a key Supreme Court precedent, and that under this interpretation, no agency would be able to stand by its decision in fixing a failure to respond to public comments (In Re Section 301 Cases, CIT #21-00052).