The Court of International Trade stayed the deadline for DOJ's response to an amicus brief filed by the American Apparel and Footwear Association in a lawsuit on a seized shipment of palm oil over forced labor concerns. The palm oil shipment was entered by importer Virtus Nutrition and was excluded from entry by CBP over suspicions that the goods were made in Malaysia by forced labor (Virtus Nutrition v. United States, CIT #21-00165).

The Commerce Department properly found that window wall system kits imported by Reflection Window + Wall are outside the scope of the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, DOJ said in a March 1 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Reflection's window wall systems aren't dependent on other systems and are inserted between slabs to cover an aperture from floor to ceiling, making the goods distinct from curtain wall units and thus "finished goods kits" that qualify for the finished goods kits scope exclusion (Aluminum Extrusion Fair Trade Committee v. U.S., CIT #21-00253).

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

A U.S. district court in California dismissed a case brought by commercial beekeeping farms that alleged that a group of importers engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. honey market by flooding it with "fake honey." Judge Troy Nunley of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California said the plaintiffs, led by Henry's Bullfrog Bees, did not make specific enough claims as to allow the defendants a chance to mount a defense (Henry's Bullfrog Bees v. Sunland Trading, E.D. Cal. #21-00582).

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

The Court of International Trade shouldn't dismiss a lawsuit brought by MS Solar over the Commerce Department's liquidation instructions issued following an antidumping duty administrative review, MS Solar said in a March 2 brief. The court has repeatedly found it has jurisdiction for these claims under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction, according to the brief, which also took issue with DOJ's claim that the action's true nature is to challenge the final ADD rate (MS Solar Investments v. U.S., CIT #21-00303).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate in an antidumping duty case after ruling that the Commerce Department can calculate the separate rate respondent's dumping margin by averaging an adverse facts available rate and a de minimis rate. The case concerns the seventh administrative review of the ADD order on diamond sawblades from China. In the review, Commerce tapped Jiangsu Fengtai Single Entity and Chengdu Huifeng New Material as the mandatory respondents, handing them an AFA China-wide 82.05% rate and zero percent rate, respectively, then assigned an average of those two rates to the separate rate respondents (Bosun Tools Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-1929, -1930).

The Court of International Trade dismissed three customs cases brought by California importer Mirror Metals in a series of three orders for lack of prosecution. All three cases were filed in February 2020 and concern CBP's assessment of Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs on the company's various metal articles. Filed under Section 1581(a), the cases contested the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security's denial of Mirror Metals' exclusion requests (Mirror Metals v. U.S., CIT #20-00039, -00040, -00041). While the importer has two other nearly identical cases filed at CIT, it also has a case filed under Section 1581(i), the trade court's "residual" jurisdiction, to contest the BIS exclusion denials that the court has found to be the proper jurisdictional outlet. Most recently in that case, the trade court remanded the denials to BIS for further review (see 2111190056).

South Korean exporter Dongkuk Steel Mill filed a complaint at the Court of International Trade March 2 to contest the Commerce Department's 2019 review of the countervailing duty order on cut-to-length carbon-quality steel plate from South Korea. Dongkuk challenges Commerce's finding that the provision of carbon emission permits to mandatory respondent Hyundai Steel constituted a countervailable subsidy. The result of the review was a 0.56% CVD rate for Dongkuk, which participated in the review as a voluntary respondent (Dongkuk Steel Mill Co. v. U.S., CIT #22-00032).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found a lawyer's appearance entry submission to not be in compliance with court rules. The court said that the entry for Willis Martyn, counsel for the U.S. in a case over the president's decision to revoke a tariff exclusion for bifacial solar panels, was not in compliance since he had not registered for an electronic filer account with the court's filing system. Martyn's contact information on the entry form also didn't match the information associated with his account (Solar Energy Industries Association v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #22-1392). In November 2021, the Court of International Trade struck down the tariff exclusion revocation, holding that the law permits only trade liberalizing alterations to the existing safeguard measures (see 2111160032).