Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 10 order upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a case involving the 2018 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on solar cells from China. On remand, Commerce said that because one of respondent Wuxi Tianran Photovoltaic's U.S. customers did not participate in the review's virtual verification, the agency didn't have enough information to verify Wuxi Tianran did not benefit from China's Export Buyer's Credit Program. The respondent conceded that Commerce complied with the trade court's remand orders. Given the lack of any challenge, Judge Jane Restani upheld the case.

The Court of International Trade in a Jan. 9 opinion denied the New Zealand government's bid to delay a preliminary injunction barring the import of certain fish taken from New Zealand's West Coast North Island multispecies set-net and trawl fisheries into the U.S. The New Zealand government requested the temporary stay of the PI to set up a traceability system that would help the govenrment identify the fish subject to the injunction. Judge Gary Katzmann said that the need to set up this system does not constitute a changed circumstance that would permit the modification of the PI.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit judges questioned the limits of the finished merchandise exclusion in antidumping and countervailing duty orders during Jan. 9 oral argument in a case over whether solar panel roof mounts fall within the scope of the AD/CVD orders on aluminum extrusions from China. While Judges Pauline Newman, Raymond Chen and Tiffany Cunningham questioned plaintiff-appellant China Custom Manufacturing's contention that its solar mounts are a finished product even though they are incorporated into a larger downstream product, the judges further probed the U.S. claims against this point with equal vigor (China Custom Manufacturing v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #22-1345).

The Supreme Court of the U.S. in a Jan. 5 order gave the government more time to respond to a petition in a broad challenge to President Donald Trump's Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs. The U.S. now has until Feb. 21 to respond after arguing that it needed additional time due to the "heavy press of earlier assigned cases to the attorneys handling this matter" (USP Holdings v. United States, U.S.S.C. #22-0565)

CBP illegally failed to refund excess antidumping duty cash deposits totaling over $490,000, importer Marubeni-Itochu Steel America argued in a Jan. 5 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it failed to suspend liquidation of the entries, hold the cash deposits in suspense and issue a prompt refund, the importer claimed (Marubeni-Itochu Steel America v. United States, CIT # 23-00004).

The Commerce Department properly found that it had enough industry support to kick off the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations into quartz surface products from India, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held in a Jan. 5 opinion. Upholding the Court of International Trade's ruling, Judges Kimberly Moore, Alan Lourie and Sharon Prost ruled that Commerce permissibly found that the term "producer" did not include quartz surface product fabricators and that the agency backed its finding that fabricators are not producers with substantial evidence via its six-factor production-related activities test.

The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 20 opinion made public Jan. 4 upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a case involving the 2017-18 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on solar cells from China. In its remand results, Commerce changed how it determined surrogate values for silver paste, a solar cell input, while revising its use of adverse facts available, choosing to use partial neutral facts available. The agency stuck by its positions, however, on which surrogate values to use for backsheet and ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA). Judge Claire Kelly found these positions to be reasonable.

Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

The Commerce Department properly tapped India as the primary surrogate country in an antidumping duty review on frozen fish filets from Vietnam, the U.S. argued in a Jan. 3 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Responding to arguments from Catfish Farmers of America vying for Indonesia to be the primary surrogate country, the government said that these claims do not undermine the choice of India and at most just seek to include Indonesia in the list of countries under consideration for the primary surrogate country (Catfish Farmers of America, et al. v. United States, CIT # 20-00105).