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 Court of International Trade ruled Dec. 18 that Commerce could use one antidumping duty review mandatory respondent’s third-country sales to calculate another’s AD when no better information was available. The opinion comes at the end of a long CIT case challenging the Commerce Department’s 2020 administrative review of the AD order on certain oil county tubular goods (OCTG) from Korea, filed by plaintiff Hyundai Steel in May 2022 (see 2205100033).

Turkish duties on a host of U.S. products in retaliation for President Donald Trump's Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs violate World Trade Organization commitments, a WTO dispute panel ruled Dec. 19. The panel said the duties violate articles I and II of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and also found that the Section 232 duties are not "safeguards."

A review of the administrative record behind the addition of Ninestar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List shows the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF) had no basis for the listing, Ninestar argued in a Dec. 15 brief in support of its bid for a preliminary injunction (Ninestar Corp. v. United States, CIT # 23-00182).

The U.S. said in a Dec. 15 motion to dismiss that CBP has discretion in deciding how to pursue investigations on forced labor allegations, including how long those investigations may take, how much information CBP will reveal and whether action will be taken at all (International Rights Advocates v. Alejandro Mayorkas, CIT # 23-00165).

Pencil importer Royal Brush Manufacturing was required to file protests before it could challenge CBP's allegedly improper liquidations under an Enforce and Protect Act antidumping duty evasion investigation, the Court of International Trade ruled on Dec. 15. Dismissing the company's case for lack of jurisdiction, Judge Mark Barnett echoed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's ruling in Juice Farms v. U.S. in ruling that "all liquidations, whether legal or not, are subject to the timely protest requirement."

The Court of International Trade wouldn't be able to "effectuate its judgment" without the authority to order reliquidation past the applicable 90-day time frame, the U.S. told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Dec. 15 reply brief. Defending the trade court's dismissal of retail giant Target's suit against a court-ordered reliquidation of Target entries that erroneously received a favorable antidumping duty rate, the U.S. distinguished the spat from Cemex v. U.S., in which the Federal Circuit barred reliquidation (Target Corp. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2274).

The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 14 opinion granted the government's request for a voluntary remand in a duty evasion case on hardwood plywood from China in light of two recent judicial opinions. One decision saw the Commerce Department reverse course on whether exporter Vietnam Finewood Co.'s goods are subject to the antidumping and countervailing duty orders, while the other said it was illegal for CBP not to give parties to Enforce and Protect Act actions access to business confidential information.

The Commerce Department "ignores critical facts" in its threshold for differentiating between different pasta types in an antidumping duty review, exporter La Molisana said in a Dec. 13 reply brief brief (La Molisana v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2060).

The president's authority to modify Section 232 tariffs doesn't allow the president to "transform" tariffs years after setting the duties "by newly restricting wholly distinct categories of derivative goods without any study and without any plausible connection to U.S. national security," exporter Oman Fasteners told the U.S. Supreme Court (Oman Fasteners v. U.S., Sup. Ct. # 23-432).