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

The Commerce Department found that two companies' door thresholds qualify for the finished merchandise exclusion to the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, in a pair of remand results at the Court of International Trade, reversing its position on the issue under protest. The remand results came after a court opinion that did not agree with Commerce's original holding that the door thresholds from Worldwide Door Components and Columbia Aluminum Products were subassemblies that required further incorporation into a larger downstream product (Worldwide Door Components, Inc. v. United States, CIT #19-00012) (Columbia Aluminum Products, LLC v. United States, CIT # 19-00013).

The Commerce Department said that two countervailing duty respondents did not use China's Export Buyer's Credit Program, in Dec. 13 remand results, flipping its position on the issue. The agency also granted one of the respondents, Canadian Solar, an entered value adjustment in response to remand instructions from the Court of International Trade that spurned the agency's decision to not make the adjustment. If sustained, the result would be a CVD rate cut for the respondents and non-selected companies (Canadian Solar Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #19-00178).

While the companies found to have evaded antidumping and countervailing duties on hardwood plywood from China argue that the evasion investigation deprived them of their due process rights, this is not how Congress set up the evasion statute, the Department of Justice argued in a Dec. 10 brief. Opposing the plaintiffs, led by American Pacific Plywood, at the Court of International Trade, DOJ said that the Enforce and Protect Act does not require CBP to notify a party that it's under investigation nor give a company access to confidential information or an opportunity to be heard. DOJ also made the case to CIT that the facts back up its ultimate evasion finding (American Pacific Plywood, Inc. et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #20-03914).

The Commerce Department must either further explain or reconsider its decision to adjust the steel plate costs for all reported control numbers in an antidumping duty investigation into wind towers, the Court of International Trade said in a Dec. 13 ruling. The agency must do so since it failed to group the CONNUMs by any of the established 11 physical characteristics used to differentiate the products or otherwise use the characteristics as a "guidepost," Judge Leo Gordon said.

The Commerce Department can no longer make a particular market situation adjustment to an antidumping respondent's cost of production in a sales-below-cost test, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held in a Dec. 10 opinion. Cementing what the Court of International Trade has repeatedly held, a three-judge panel at the appellate court said that the statute -- in particular, a section of the 2015 Trade Preferences Extension Act -- does not permit such a PMS adjustment. Rather, the statute only allows a PMS adjustment for constructed value, the Federal Circuit said.

A group of U.S. steel companies, including U.S. Steel Corp., made their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals to the Federal Circuit in a Dec. 8 brief as to why they should be allowed to intervene in multiple cases challenging the Commerce Department's decision to deny an exclusion to Section 232 national security tariffs. The Court of International Trade had denied their right to intervene due to the companies' lack of a legally protectable interest in the cases. The American steel producers countered by arguing that they have a right to intervene based on their participation administratively in the exclusion cases, direct economic stake in the outcome and position as intended beneficiaries of the Section 232 measures (California Steel Industries, Inc. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-2172).

The issue of whether a South Korean port usage rights program is countervailable is not moot just because the Commerce Department has now assigned a de minimis rate to the countervailing duty respondent, Hyundai Steel Co. argued in a Dec. 8 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Rather, since Commerce can continue subjecting Hyundai to countervailing duty reviews based on this port usage rights program, the question is key for Hyundai, despite the fact that it is not being hit with CV duties this time around, the company said (Hyundai Steel Company v. United States, CIT #20-03799).

CBP unfairly denied importer Compressed Air Systems' protest showing that it overpaid duties and fees for its air compressor and vacuum pump part entries, CAS argued in its Dec. 7 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Due to a clerical error committed by the customs broker, the entries were overvalued, CAS said. CBP then refused to fix the error after the importer protested CBP's liquidation of the entries, leading the company to file suit with the trade court (Compressed Air Systems, LLC v. CBP, CIT #21-00615).

The Commerce Department went too far when hitting antidumping respondent BlueScope Steel Ltd. with total adverse facts available in an AD review, the Court of International Trade said in a Nov. 30 opinion, made public on Dec. 8. Remanding the case to Commerce, Judge Richard Eaton said that Commerce failed to back its AFA finding for two reasons: it did not show that BlueScope's responses created a gap in the record over its U.S. sales quantity and value report, and failed to give notice of deficient responses relating to reconciling BlueScope's U.S. and home market sales information with prior submissions.