The Commerce Department properly dropped its particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test, the Court of International Trade held in a June 16 opinion. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said that since the question of whether Commerce can make such an adjustment was settled in the key Hyundai Steel v. U.S. case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, "the court need not waste its or the Parties' resources any further."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate June 16 in two cases contesting whether the Commerce Department properly modified the scope of its antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on quartz surface products from China in response to evasion. Building materials company Bruskin International argued that Commerce was wrong to accept the petitioner's scope request, claiming that the agency should have treated it as a request to amend the petition. In the opinion, the appellate court held that the agency is not bound to the preliminary scope and that it had properly changed the scope under its own authority and not per the petitioner's request (see 2204250029) (M S International, et al. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-1679, -1680).

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The Court of International Trade in a June 15 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's decision to drop its particular market situation adjustment to antidumping duty respondent Hyundai Steel Corp.'s cost of production. However, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves sent back the agency's decision to continue making a PMS adjustment to the other mandatory respondent Husteel Co.'s normal value when calculating non-examined respondent SeAH Steel Corp.'s dumping margin.

By saying that membership in a Chinese labor union by some of the ownership of an antidumping duty respondent precludes it from proving the absence of de facto Chinese government control, the Commerce Department "radically" changed its separate rate analysis, exporter Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export Corp. (ZMC) said in a June 14 reply brief. Arguing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, ZMC said that the Commerce's new concept of potential government control created by this standard is "too abstract to be lawful" (Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2257).

The Court of International Trade should rule in favor of importer Second Nature in its case challenging CBP classification of its imported dried botanicals, the importer said in a June 14 brief (Second Nature Designs Ltd. v. United States, CIT #17-00271). The importer asked the court for a summary judgment classifying all subject merchandise under subheading 0604.90.30 as dried or bleached, regardless of a subsequent dying and painting process, and reliquidating the entries duty-free.

The Commerce Department erred by rejecting the Coalition of American Manufacturers of Mobile Access Equipment's surrogate data for ocean freight along with a host of inputs for mobile access equipment, the coalition said in a June 13 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The coalition argued that its own surrogate value data "more accurately reflected the inputs" used than the data Commerce did end up using (Coalition of American Manufacturers of Mobile Access Equipment v. United States, CIT #22-00152).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate on June 13 in an antidumping case over the Commerce Department's differential pricing analysis. In the case's opinion, the Federal Circuit said that Commerce must reconsider its decision to use a simple average to calculate the pooled standard deviation when using the Cohen's d test in the DPA to target "masked dumping" (see 2204210031). Ruling that Commerce strayed from the statistical literature without a proper explanation, Judges Pauline Newman, Alan Lourie and Richard Taranto said the agency should reconsider whether a weighted average for calculating the Cohen's d denominator is more appropriate (Mid Continent Steel & Wire v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1747).

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers filed an amicus brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in a case over whether Japanese manufacturer Sigma Corporation, along with other companies, is guilty of violating the False Claims Act for not paying antidumping duties. The two trade groups argued that businesses that act consistently with a reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous regulation lack the "requisite False Claims Act scienter" and that the district court should have said there was no obligation to pay the duties given that the duties are not owed on the imports at issue (Island Industries, et al. v. Sigma Corporation, 9th Cir. # 22-55063).