The Court of International Trade overlooked the principle that the Commerce Department has the burden to support its use of the expected method in antidumping cases, importer PrimeSource Building Products argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The non-selected respondent filed the suit to challenge Commerce's decision to weight average two adverse facts available rates when calculating the non-selected respondents' rate in an administrative review on steel nails from Taiwan (PrimeSource Building Products v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2128).

Fourteen types of frozen fruit mixtures, five of which contain vegetable ingredients, should be classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 0811.90.80 as "other" frozen fruits, dutiable at 14.5%, the Court of International Trade ruled. Judge Stephen Vaden said the merchandise is properly classified under heading 0811 since the term "Fruit ... frozen" describes these goods in whole.

The Commerce Department illegally relied on raw honey acquisition costs as a proxy to calculate costs of production in the antidumping duty investigation into raw honey from India, despite those respondents withholding information and impeding the investigation, the American Honey Producers Association and the Sioux Honey Association argued in a May 23 brief at the Court of International Trade (American Honey Producers Association v. U.S., CIT # 22-00195).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit again rejected the Coalition of Freight Coupler Producers' bid to redact 180 unique words in its reply brief in an attorney conflict-of-interest suit. Judge Alan Prost said most of the information the coalition is seeking to redact was made publicly available in the Court of International Trade proceeding, and said information relating to the terms of an engagement agreement the coalition sought to redact was "disclosed without objection" in importer Amsted Rail's opening and reply briefs (Amsted Rail Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1355).

The International Trade Commission didn't properly consider the "unprecedented conditions" of competition during the period of review in its investigation on oil country tubular goods (OCTG) from Argentina and Mexico, which led to "erroneous volume, price, and impact determinations, Tenaris Bay City and consolidated plaintiffs from two other cases said in a May 22 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade (Tenaris Bay City, Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00344).

Antidumping duty petitioner Mid Continent Steel & Wire does not have standing to appeal a Court of International Trade decision barring the government from collected AD cash deposits from exporter Oman Fasteners at the "punitive" 154.33% dumping rate, Oman Fasteners argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Mid Continent is not subject to the injunction and cannot establish legally protected interest in the injunction, "which merely keeps Oman Fasteners in business until a final rate can be determined," the brief said (Oman Fasteners v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1661).

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The Court of International Trade appeared in a May 22 decision to sympathize with the idea that the Commerce Department should have taken into account a cooperative China-wide exporter's own data to recalculate the China-wide rate in an antidumping review, but ultimately the court declined to remand for a recalculation because the exporter had requested a remand to make it a separate rate respondent, not to review the China-wide entity.

The Court of International Trade on May 22 upheld the Commerce Department's finding that both Guizhou Tyre Co. (GTC) and Double Coin Holdings failed to rebut the presumption of Chinese government control in the antidumping duty investigation on truck and bus tires from China. Despite Commerce's "inartful and internally-inconsistent approach" to the question of whether a company majority-owned by a government entity could ever prove to be free of government control, Judge Timothy Stanceu said the agency did enough to show that Double Coin did not pick its managers independently of the government-owned shareholder.

The Court of International Trade recently upheld the Commerce Department's finding that exporter Shantou Red Garden Food Processing Co. (Shantou Processing) was not the successor-in-interest to Red Garden Food Processing Co. (Red Garden), which subjected the exporter to antidumping duties on frozen warmwater shrimp from China.