The Commerce Department should have at least allowed Japanese steel exporter Tokyo Steel to participate in an antidumping review on hot-rolled steel flat products from Japan as a voluntary respondent, importer Optima Steel International said in a May complaint at the Court of International Trade, arguing Commerce improperly chose only one respondent in the review (Optima Steel International v. U.S., CIT # 23-00108).

The Commerce Department did not offer any source to justify its use of 24 working days per month as part of its surrogate value calculation for labor in an antidumping review, the Court of International Trade ruled. Remanding parts and sustaining parts of the seventh administrative review of the AD order on multilayered wood flooring from China, Judge Richard Eaton also sent back Commerce's surrogate financial ratio calculation for manufacturing overhead. Eaton did uphold the surrogate value determination for glue, however.

The Court of International Trade on May 18 sustained a second remand redetermination by the Commerce Department in its seventh administrative review of the antidumping duty orders on off-road tires from China, finding Commerce permissibly applied its methodology when it denied separate rate status to Chinese exporters Guizhou Tyre Import and Export (GTC) and Aeolus Tyre and instead assigned the "China-wide" AD rate of 105.31%.

A company unable to prove it has any entries for the purposes of obtaining a separate rate should not automatically be found to have no shipments and be rescinded from the review, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a May 19 opinion. Though the appellate court found the government's claim that it is not required to rescind a review for a company with no entries unconvincing, Judges Timothy Dyk, Richard Linn and Raymond Chen said that Ningbo Qixin did not clear the bar for establishing no shipments, even though Commerce had rejected a separate rate for the company because it couldn't verify any entries.

The Commerce Department's new proposed regulations covering trade remedy proceedings may lead to a "significant number of new allegations and arguments in AD/CVD proceedings," Sidley Austin said in a client alert this week. Highlighting three of the potential new tools to be added to the agency's toolkit in the proposed rules, Sidley added that one of the mechanisms -- Commerce's removal of the regulation barring it from countervailing transnational subsidies -- may violate World Trade Organization commitments.

The U.S.'s customs penalty suit against importer Wanxiang America Corp., a U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese manufacturing company, is a "money grab, plain and simple," Michael Roll, counsel for WXA, said during oral argument at the Court of International Trade on May 17. Roll said that because the U.S. is only seeking a penalty for WXA's entries from a company with a 92.84% dumping rate and not entries made before or after the ones at issue from a company with a zero percent rate, it is clear the government is trying to "grab the money" (United States v. Wanxiang America Corp., CIT # 22-00205).

Importer Cyber Power Systems (USA) failed to identify a flaw in the Court of International Trade's ruling concerning the origin of the company's uninterruptible power supplies, Judge Leo Gordon said in denying Cyber Power's bid for CIT reconsideration. The judge said the request "is premised on the incorrect assumption that the court found that" the importer overcame the presumption of correctness linked to CBP's country of origin determination, which found that the products were made in China.

The Commerce Department failed to rely on the best available information when setting surrogate values for antidumping duty respondent Risen Energy Co.'s backsheet and ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA) inputs in the AD administrative review on solar cells from China in 2017-18, Risen argued in an opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Risen also challenged the Commerce's calculation of the company's financial ratios (Risen Energy Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1550).

DOJ is seeking nearly $15 million in unpaid customs duties and civil penalties from five Florida importers at the Court of International Trade for alleged evasion of antidumping duties, according to a May 15 complaint (U.S. v. Lexjet, et al., CIT # 23-00105).

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