The Court of International Trade on Sept. 1 upheld the final determination in an antidumping duty investigation on raw honey from India, siding with the Commerce Department on the agency's decision to have respondents report their acquisition costs and to verify that information from a subset of their suppliers due top a lack of data from hundreds of individual honey producers.

The U.S. "consistently fails to consider" the filing of a collection action in the Court of International Trade as a valid "'demand' for liquidated duties," surety firm Aegis Security Insurance Co. told the trade court in an Aug. 30 reply brief. Given this failure, the government is illegally trying to limit the concept of "demand" to the issuance of a bill in its attempt to get Aegis to pay a customs bond on entries that liquidated in 2006, the brief said (United States v. Aegis Security Insurance Co., CIT # 20-03628).

A recent legal case in the EU helped clear up how the European Commission considers the factors it points to when identifying if a company has evaded antidumping duties, said Simran Sethi, senior manager at OCR Global Trade Management Software Solutions, during an Aug. 30 webinar. Speaking to the importance of import compliance in light of recent judicial developments in the U.S. and abroad, Sethi laid out the four criteria the commission considers when making its evasion findings.

Door thresholds imported by Worldwide Door Components and Columbia Aluminum Products are both expressly and generally within the scope of antidumping and countervailing orders on aluminum extrusions from China, petitioner Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee said in an Aug. 29 reply at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Worldwide Door Components v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1532) (Columbia Aluminum Products v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1534).

Exporter Tau-Ken Temir waived its arguments against the Commerce Department's decision to grant the company's first two extension requests in part and reject the third request, the U.S. argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The government said that because TKT did not raise the issues either at Commerce or at the Court of International Trade in its case on the countervailing duty investigation on silicon metal from Kazakhstan, the appellate court need not address the claims (Tau-Ken Temir v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2204).

The Commerce Department's use of an adverse inference against exporter Yama Ribbons and Bows Co. for its supposed benefit from China's Export Buyer's Credit Program was "critically flawed," the Court of International Trade ruled on Aug. 25. Judge Timothy Stanceu, remanding the 2018 review of the countervailing duty order on woven ribbon from China, said that Commerce based its use of adverse facts available on "missing" information from the Chinese government that the agency never actually requested. The judge added that submissions from the Chinese state, along with Yama itself, stand as enough to refute any finding that the exporter benefitted from the EBCP.

The Commerce Department revised its surrogate manufacturing overhead ratio and its surrogate hourly labor rate on remand at the Court of International Trade as part of a suit on the 2017-18 review of the antidumping duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China. Per the remand results, submitted on Aug. 24, Commerce raised the dumping rate for respondent Fusong Jinglong Wooden Group Co. from zero to 2.05%, while keeping the 0% rate for Jiangsu Guyu International Trading Co. The rate for the non-individually examined companies also rose to 2.05% (American Manufacturers of Multilayered Wood Flooring v. United States, CIT # 20-03948).

The Commerce Department didn't properly select Brazil as the primary surrogate nation in an antidumping review while also using Malaysian data for respondent Senmao's log inputs, the Court of International Trade ruled in an Aug. 24 opinion. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said that in the 2019-20 AD review of multilayered wood flooring from China, Commerce failed to point to any record evidence it used in ditching Brazil's data for Malaysia's.

The Commerce Department offered greater explanations of its treatment of four types of income related to the selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expense ratio for surrogate company Ayes in the antidumping duty investigation on metal lockers from China. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade Aug. 23, the agency stuck by its treatment of shipping revenue, incentive income, interest income and rental income in setting the SG&A ratio (List Industries v. U.S., CIT # 21-00521).

Aluminum extrusion fence parts from China imported by Fortress Iron don't meet the "finished goods kit" exception to antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China and should have been declared subject to AD/CVD, CBP found in a recently released Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA) determination. The agency found substantial evidence that Fortress had evaded AD/CVD orders by importing fence components from Chinese suppliers that didn't meet the exclusion requirements while failing to declare those imports as subject to the orders.