The Commerce Department stuck by its decision not to investigate the alleged off-peak sale of electricity for less than adequate remuneration and not to treat POSCO Plantec -- an affiliate of countervailing duty respondent POSCO -- as a cross-owned input supplier of POSCO. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on Jan. 31, Commerce said that the subsidy allegation over the provision of off-peak electricity "did not provide sufficient evidence of a benefit for Commerce to initiate on the allegation," and that the inputs provided by POSCO Planted were not mainly dedicated to downstream product production (Nucor Corp. v. United States, CIT # 21-00182).

The Court of International Trade upheld CBP's affirmative evasion finding in an Enforce and Protect Act investigation against Leco Supply, in a confidential Jan. 24 opinion made public Feb. 1. Judge Mark Barnett held that CBP legally initiated the investigation, backed the evasion decision with substantial evidence, properly rejected Leco's written arguments during remand as untimely and protected the plaintiff's due process rights.

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Importer Royal Brush Manufacturing has failed to rebut the U.S.'s showing that an appeal of an Enforce and Protect Act case should be dismissed since the entries have all been liquidated, the government argued in a Jan. 30 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Royal Brush failed to address the U.S. reliance on Federal Circuit precedent showing that "an unprotested liquidation divests the trial court of jurisdiction, even if the liquidation was erroneous," the brief said (Royal Brush Manufacturing v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-1226).

Protests seeking refunds for granted exclusions from Section 232 tariffs must be filed in a timely manner, even when the process is complicated by government errors, the DOJ argued in a Jan. 27 motion to dismiss at the Court of International Trade (SXP Schulz Xtruded Products v. United States, CIT # 22-00136).

The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 27 order let the Commerce Department add a questionnaire deficiencies analysis to the record in an antidumping duty case. The order said the memorandum is appropriately part of the record because the agency used it in coming up with the review's final results. Judge Stephen Vaden held that omitting the analysis would "frustrate judicial review," and that, despite respondent Grupo Simec's claims, Commerce did not act in bad faith by leaving the review off the record.

The U.S. filed appeals against four World Trade Organization dispute panel rulings that found the U.S. Section 232 national security tariffs on steel and aluminum violated global trade rules. The U.S. said during the Jan. 27 meeting of the dispute settlement body it will take the case to the Appellate Body -- the next tier of the WTO's dispute settlement system that stands defunct due to U.S. refusal to seat members on the body over reform concerns.

The Commerce Department slashed the dumping margin for exporter Ajmal Steel Tubes & Pipe Industries on remand in an antidumping review after accepting the respondent's answers to Section A of the AD questionnaire. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on Jan. 26, Commerce dropped the dumping margin for Ajmal to 0.57% after using the company's own data as opposed to adverse facts available to calculate the margin. The agency originally rejected the submission after it was submitted late by less than two hours due to COVID-19-related technical difficulties (Ajmal Steel Tubes & Pipes Industries v. United States, CIT # 21-00587).

The Commerce Department properly found that foreign manufacturer BlueScope Steel did not reimburse its affiliated importer, BlueScope Steel Americas, for the amount of antidumping duties BlueScope Americas paid on imports of hot-rolled steel flat products, defendant-appellees BlueScope and BlueScope Americas argued in a Jan. 25 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Petitioner U.S. Steel's claims to the contrary rest on a misinterpretation of the record and inappropriately claim BlueScope Americas was indirectly reimbursed via formula price provisions laid out in a supply agreement between BlueScope and BlueScope Americas, the brief said (U.S. Steel v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2078).

The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 25 opinion dismissed a case from J.D. Irving on the Commerce Department's cash deposit instructions to CBP after the 2019 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on softwood lumber products from Canada. Judge Timothy Reif said that the court did not have subject matter jurisdiction to hear the case under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction, since jurisdiction would have been available under Section 1581(c), "but for the decision" by parties involved to request a binational panel review of the AD review under USMCA.