The Commerce Department continued on remand to use antidumping duty respondent Nexco's acquisition costs as a proxy for the cost of production of beekeeper-suppliers as part of the antidumping duty investigation on raw honey from Argentina. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on Oct. 13, Commerce also stuck by its decision to compare Nexco's U.S. sale prices with normal values based on Nexco's third-country sale prices to Germany on a monthly basis instead of a quarterly basis (Nexco v. U.S., CIT # 22-00203).

CBP's decision to assess antidumping and countervailing duties on its 2019 imports of solar modules from Vietnam could only be challenged under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i) because no other jurisdictions were available to provide relief of the "unprecedented" imposition of AD and CVD on merchandise not subject to an AD or CVD order, Greentech Energy Solutions said in its Oct. 12 response to DOJ's earlier motion to dismiss a case regarding imports of solar modules from Vietnam (Greentech Energy Solutions v. U.S., CIT # 23-00118).

The Commerce Department made no changes to subsidy rates calculated for the countervailing duty investigation of phosphate fertilizers from Russia, according to remand results it submitted to the Court of International Trade on Oct. 11 (The Mosaic Company v. U.S., CIT # 21-00117).

The Commerce Department isn't allowed to rely on its past practice if it's contrary to a statute, though it "has sought to do just that in" the antidumping duty investigation on wind towers from Spain, the Court of International Trade ruled in an Oct. 12 opinion. Judge Timothy Stanceu said Commerce can't assign an individual company's adverse facts available rate to an entire collapsed entity in the present circumstances. The judge sent back the investigation for a second time, taking Commerce to task for ignoring the court's prior orders.

The Commerce Department didn't properly support its de jure specificity finding regarding a Chinese tax program that makes a resident enterprise's income derived from investment gains in another resident enterprise tax-exempt, the Court of International Trade ruled in an Oct. 11 opinion. Judge Jane Restani said the program, established under Article 26(2) of China's Enterprise Income Tax Law, is not tied to a specific enterprise or industry and thus fails the specificity analysis.

The Supreme Court should take up a case on whether President Donald Trump lawfully expanded Section 232 steel and aluminum duties to cover "derivative" products to decide how separation-of-powers principles apply to statutory interpretations delegating vast legislative power to the executive, petitioner PrimeSource Building Products argued. Filing a brief in response to the government's defense, PrimeSource claimed that its case gives the court a chance to "do something about" the government's position that the executive can exercise both Congress' legislative powers and the judiciary's "interpretive responsibilities" (PrimeSource Building Products v. United States, Sup. Ct. # 23-69).

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The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's fifth remand redetermination of the antidumping duty investigation of hardwood plywood products from China, according to an Oct. 10 opinion. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves sustained Commerce's separate rate along with its decisions to exclude Jiangyang Wood and Dehua TB, and to include Sanfortune Wood and Longyuan Wood within the order.

The U.S. must further explain its decision not to add certain documents to the record in a case on the National Marine Fisheries Service's rejection of importer Southern Cross Seafoods' application for preapproval to import Chilean sea bass, the Court of International Trade ruled. Judge Timothy Reif said in an Oct. 5 opinion made public Oct. 10 that the government must address inconsistencies in its reasons for not including information showing how the NMFS obtained outside legal opinions included in the administrative record and information identifying who authored a relevant legal opinion.

The Commerce Department made no changes to the final results of the 2019 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on corrosion-resistant steel goods from South Korea, in its Oct. 5 remand results. Commerce said that, in accordance with the court's July remand order (see 2307100028), it further explained its decision-making process for finding that three debt-to-equity restructurings provided a countervailable benefit, that a benefit passed to the new ownership, and that the uncreditworthy benchmark rate and unequityworthy discount rate were correctly calculated and applied (KG Dongbu Steel Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00047).