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).

Steel exporter SeAH Steel Corp. wants a full court rehearing over a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit opinion that found reasonable the Commerce Department's practice of capping freight revenue when calculating U.S. price. Filing a motion for rehearing on April 25, SeAH said that the statute is not ambiguous on when U.S. price may be adjusted for freight costs seeing as it does not permit any adjustments for freight cost when the starting price does not include freight (NEXTEEL Co., Ltd. v. United States, CAFC # 21-1334)

The Commerce Department properly modified the scope of its antidumping duty and countervailing duty investigations on quartz surface products from China in response to evidence of evasion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in an April 25 opinion. Building materials company Bruskin International argued against Commerce's decision to accept the petitioner's scope request, telling the court the agency should have treated it as a request to amend the petition. But Judges Todd Hughes, Haldane Mayer and Kara Stoll ruled that Commerce was not bound to the preliminary scope and that it properly found the scope to be defective due to evidence of evasion.

Court of International Trade Judge Timothy Stanceu granted a motion from importer Nutricia North America that asked to reopen discovery to replace the company's expert witness in an ongoing case regarding classification of infant formulas (Nutricia North America v. United States, CIT #16-00008). Nutricia asked for the record to be reopened after it discovered that its witness, Dr. Joel Lavine, was convicted of sexually abusing an adult former patient. With the order from Judge Timothy Stanceu, Nutricia will replace Lavine with Dr. Jonah Essers.

The Commerce Department must reconsider its decision to use a simple average to calculate the pooled standard deviation when using the Cohen's d test in its differential pricing analysis to target "masked dumping," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in an April 21 opinion. Ruling that Commerce strayed from the statistical literature without a proper explanation, Judges Pauline Newman, Alan Lourie and Richard Taranto said the agency should reconsider whether a weighted average for calculating the Cohen's d denominator is more appropriate.

Two companies that arrange for the shipment of goods with vessel operating carriers, Shine Shipping and Shine International (Shine), will no longer be able to import, export, transport, offer for sale, sell or assist any such activity, for any goods bearing Nike trademarks, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said. Wrapping up a trademark infringement case, the district court released the terms of the stipulated permanent injunction and final order against Shine, including orders to verify every shipment to the U.S. with either the foreign shipper, importer or foreign freight forwarder (Nike v. B&H Customs Services, S.D.N.Y. #20-01214).

The Court of International Trade should rehear its decision on whether a Warehousing Agreement between two related companies sufficed as a lease or similar use agreement since it failed to address one of the U.S.'s arguments that the two entities are not separate but merely a single entity, DOJ argued in an April 20 motion for rehearing (SGS Sports v. United States, CIT #18-00128).

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The Court of International Trade sent back parts of and upheld one element of the Commerce Department's final results of the 2017-2018 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on welded line pipe from South Korea, in an April 19 opinion. Judge Claire Kelly sent back Commerce's particular market situation determination and adjustment methodology, PMS adjustment to respondent SeAH Steel Corp.'s home market sales for the sales-below-cost test, denial of a constructed export price (CEP) offset for SeAH, reallocation of respondent NEXTEEL Co.'s suspended loss and non-prime product costs, and separate rate calculation. The judge sustained, however, Commerce's decision to cap SeAH's freight revenue.

The Commerce Department cannot use an antidumping evasion finding to reject AD review respondent Z.A. Sea Foods Private Limited's (ZASF) Vietnamese data when calculating normal value, the Court of International Trade said in an April 19 opinion. Since ZASF is not mentioned in the Enforce and Protect Act investigation cited by Commerce as the basis for rejecting the Vietnamese data, it is not clear how the agency decided that some of ZASF's Vietnamese sales ultimately wound up in the U.S., Judge Gary Katzmann said.