The Commerce Department must provide further explanation for, and if needed, reconsider its finding as to whether the "likely selling price" of non-prime plate set in antidumping respondent AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke's books is the best available information for evaluating the cost of production, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Sept. 23 opinion. Given the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's opinion in a "parallel matter" instructing Commerce to find the actual cost of production for prime and non-prime cut-to-length plate, Judge Leo Gordon sent back Commerce's reliance on Dillinger's "likely selling price" of non-prime plate.

The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 22 opinion denied plaintiff Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret's motion to stay its countervailing duty review challenge pending resolution of a case over the previous review of the same CVD order. Judge Gary Katzmann said the stay would not promote judicial economy since the pending cases are before CIT and not the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and that Kaptan has not put forth any "pressing need" for a stay. The judge commented on the lack of any "talismanic formula" for finding when a stay motion should be granted and the need to weigh the various conditions at play.

Mandatory antidumping respondent Dong-A Steel Co. can intervene in a challenge to an antidumping review brought by the review's other mandatory respondent HiSteel Co., the Court of International Trade ruled in a Sept. 22 opinion. Judge Gary Katzmann said that Dong-A has "piggyback standing" to intervene since it and HiSteel seek the same relief, and that the exporter can intervene "as of right" since it is "an interested party who was a party to the proceeding."

The U.S. cannot seize or forfeit imports that are federally deemed "drug paraphernalia" but whose delivery, possession and manufacture were made legal at the state level, the Court of International Trade ruled Sept. 21. Judge Gary Katzmann found Washington state's move to make the marijuana-related drug paraphernalia legal allows interested parties to import the paraphernalia under the federal exemption laid out in the Controlled Substances Act.

The Commerce Department did not properly explain why it was appropriate to inflate a Mexican labor wage rate using Brazilian data in an antidumping duty investigation, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Sept. 13 opinion, made public Sept. 21. Commerce requested a voluntary remand in the case to further explain its decision, since it admitted to the court that it did not explain this position. Judge M. Miller Baker also sent the case back so the agency can identify the evidence in the record that supports granting Guangzhou Ulix Industrial & Trading Co. a separate rate.

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The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 20 order denied a motion from John Liu and GL Paper Distribution, defendants in a Section 592 penalty case, to strike a portion of the complaint. Liu moved to toss elements of the complaint he deemed to not be relevant to the imports at issue. Judge Jane Restani ruled that striking these parts of the complaint would be "premature," since the matter of relevancy is a "question of evidence" and not meant to be subject to a motion to strike.

The U.S. was wrong to argue that the Commerce Department does not need to satisfy any criteria when refusing to start a successor-in-interest changed circumstances review, plaintiff GreenFirst Forest Products argued in a Sept. 19 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. The government ignored that both Commerce and the trade court have recognized the agency's practice of looking at whether the agency individually calculated the former company's subsidy rate to deny the successor-in-interest CCR, the plaintiff said (GreenFirst Forest v. U.S., CIT #22-00097).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should allow the U.S. to double its word count in its reply brief in a case on President Donald Trump's move to revoke a tariff exclusion for bifacial solar panels, the U.S. argued in a Sept. 15 brief at the appellate court. The government argued that good cause exists for their motion since it must reply to the issue of presidential authority raised by the appellees along with several alternative problems, and because the importance of the issues in question warrant an enlargement of the word count (Solar Energy Industries Association v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1392).

The Commerce Department properly dropped its use of facts available over a South Korean port usage rights program in a countervailing duty review, the Court of International Trade ruled Sept. 19. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves also found that because the result is a de minimis rate, reviewing whether the program is countervailable "would have no practical significance and is mooted," sustaining Commerce's remand results.