Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

The U.S. defended its expert witness in a customs classification dispute from a motion to remove the witness, Dr. Athanasios Meliopoulos, in a May 2 brief filed at the Court of International Trade. DOJ said that Meliopoulos is "eminently qualified" to give his opinion on a key question in the case -- whether the imported electrical conduit tubing is lined with insulating materials -- and that his testimony is admissible since it is relevant to resolving this key factual dispute in the matter at hand (Shamrock Building Materials v. United States, CIT #20-00074).

The Court of International Trade remanded elements of the Commerce Department's administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam. In an April 25 opinion made public May 3 submitted in two cases -- one brought by the sole mandatory respondent NTSF Seafoods Joint Stock Co. and the other by Catfish Farmers of America, et al. -- Judge M. Miller Baker sent back parts of the review that deal with Commerce's position over whether Indonesia has a comparable level of economic development to Vietnam, whether the Indian factors of production data are the best available as compared to Indonesia, Commerce's failure to engage with contradicting evidence over NTSF's ratio of whole live fish to fillets and the moisture content of NTSF's fillets.

President Donald Trump's move to expand Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs to cover "derivative" products beyond certain procedural timelines was illegal since it was not part of the Section 232 tariffs' original "plan of action," a group of three steel importers argued. Filing a response brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the appellees took into account the Federal Circuit's previous ruling permitting a different tariff action beyond procedural time limits to argue that the expansion onto derivatives was illegal.

The Court of International Trade in a May 2 order rejected Canadian exporter J.D. Irving's bid to establish expedited briefing and consideration of its challenge to the Commerce Department's antidumping duty cash deposit instructions. Judge Timothy Reif said the exporter failed to establish that "good cause" exists to expedite the case since the company's requested relief can be granted even after the deadline to withdraw its request for the fourth review of the AD order on softwood lumber products from Canada.

Importer Acquisition 362, doing business as Strategic Import Supply, didn't need to file a protest to establish jurisdiction to challenge the liquidation of its entries since there was nothing to protest within 180 days of liquidation, SIS said in an April 29 reply brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. DOJ continues to "improperly oversimplify the analysis" by repeating the "mantra" that the importer was required to file a protest to contest the liquidation of the entries, SIS argued, seeking remand to the Court of International Trade (Acquisition 362, LLC dba Strategic Import Supply v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #22-1161).

The Commerce Department's anti-circumvention inquiry into the antidumping and countervailing duties on corrosion-resistant steel (CORE) products from China did not violate the intent behind Congress' passage of the anti-circumvention statute, the U.S. said in an April 27 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Al Ghurair Iron & Steel v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1199).

A contract clause between the middleman and the final customer is not proof of a bona fide sale for the purposes of determining whether a transaction is eligible for first sale treatment, CBP said in a recent ruling. Merely citing the clause within a contract does not provide actual proof of the facts of that sale or whether risk of loss and title actually transfer to the middleman before it entered into the transaction with the importer, CBP said in the Feb. 18 ruling, released by the agency April 26. The ruling was a response to an application for further review by Woodcraft Supply LLC, which contests CBP's denial of its first sale valuation of imported merchandise.

The Commerce Department continued to deny two groups of plaintiffs in an antidumping case -- led by Guizhou Tyre Co. and Double Coin Holdings -- separate rate status, finding on remand ordered by the Court of International Trade that the companies still failed to rebut the presumption of Chinese government control. Commerce said that Guizhou Tyre and Double Coin are not free from government control regarding how they pick their management and thus are under government control for the purposes of the antidumping duty investigation on truck and bus tires from China (Guizhou Tyre Co. v. United States, CIT #19-00031).

A good faith disagreement over the scope of antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders cannot be construed as a "material and false statement," needed to find evasion under the Enforce and Protect Act, importers Ikadan System USA and Weihai Gaosai Metal Product Co. argued in an April 26 brief at the Court of International Trade. As such, CBP's evasion finding is illegal, as it fails to make a proper finding of evasion, the brief said (Ikadan System USA v. United States, CIT #21-00592).