The Court of International Trade, in a Jan. 7 letter to litigants in an antidumping duty case, asked the parties to consult on whether oral argument should be held on issues not currently part of ongoing appeals of key Section 232 questions. The case, brought by respondent and Turkish steel company Noksel Celik Boru Sanayi, concerns the Commerce Department's refusal to grant a full duty drawback adjustment and a deduction of Section 232 steel and aluminum duties from the company's U.S. price (see 2112300044) (Noksel Celik Boru Sanayi v. U.S., CIT #21-00140). While the Section 232 issue is being appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2097, Judge Jane Restani asked the parties to figure out if litigation can continue without the Section 232 question involved. Restani also pointed to the current petition to the Supreme Court over the validity of some Section 232 tariffs in Transpacific Steel LLC, et al. v. U.S.

The Labor Department unlawfully relied on unverified statements from AT&T officials when denying a unionized group of former AT&T call workers trade adjustment assistance, the Court of International Trade said in a Jan. 5 opinion. Sending the decision back to Labor a second time, Judge Miller Baker said the department can't claim to have verified email communications with AT&T's in-house counsel based only on AT&T knowing the most about its business operations.

CBP wants the Court of International Trade to grant its voluntary remand request to reconsider its final determination in an antidumping and countervailing duty evasion case. The U.S. said the remand would allow CBP to consider the issues raised by plaintiff Fedmet Resources, including scope-related and due process arguments. Fedmet signed off on the remand request while the defendant-intervenor Magnesia Carbon Bricks Fair Trade Committee didn't directly oppose it.

The Court of International Trade granted importer Kehoe Component Sales' consent motion to designate its action as a test case and suspend its two other actions under the test case. All three cases involve the proper Harmonized Tariff Schedule classification of the importer's heat blanket controllers. Kehoe said that the resolution of all of the actions could be best served by designating a single test case. The Department of Justice's Peter Mancuso consented to the motion (Kehoe Component Sales v. U.S., CIT #19-00007).

The Court of International Trade assigned six cases over the Commerce Department's final results in the 2018 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China to Judge Timothy Reif. The lead plaintiffs in the cases are Zhejiang Dadongwu Greenhome Wood Co., Fine Furniture (Shanghai) Limited, Evolutions Flooring, Dunhua City Jisen Wood Industry Co., Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) Co., and American Manufacturers of Multilayered Wood Flooring. The complaints concern, among other things, the alleged use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program, Commerce's calculations for the provision of veneer and electricity for less than adequate remuneration, and the agency's decision to use a VAT rate that doesn't reflect what the respondent actually paid.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found the Department of Justice's opening brief in the PrimeSource appeal to not be in compliance with court rules. In the Jan. 6 notice of non-compliance, the appellate court said that the caption provided on the document doesn't follow the official caption provided by the clerk. DOJ has five business days to fix the filing. The high-profile case concerns the president's ability to expand Section 232 national security tariffs to goods beyond those specified in the Commerce secretary's report to the president at a time that is beyond procedural deadlines. In the brief, DOJ argued that the statutes allows for such a move, in line with the Federal Circuit's opinion in a recent ruling on Section 232 (see 2201040024) (PrimeSource Building Products Inc. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2066).

No lawsuits have been filed recently at the Court of International Trade.

The Department of Justice and plaintiff-appellee Mid Continent Steel & Wire both filed corrected response briefs to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit after the appellate court found their initial submissions to not be in compliance with court rules. The Federal Circuit said that the U.S.'s brief had an incomplete case number on the cover, since it didn't include all consolidated case numbers, and that it failed to follow the court's format for referencing the underlying record. Mid Continent's brief also suffered from this latter problem while also including a mismatch of the contact information for Lauren Fraid, counsel for Mid Continent, between the brief and the user's account (Xi'an Metals & Minerals Import & Export Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2205).

A case brought by Canadian exporter J.D. Irving challenging the Commerce Department's antidumping duty cash deposit instructions to CBP was assigned to Judge Timothy Reif in a Jan. 5 order. The complaint contests the instruction that follows the final results of the 2019 administrative review of the AD duty order on softwood lumber products from Canada. Neither J.D. Irving nor any U.S. lumber producer requested a review of the exporter for the 2020 period of review, yet Commerce nevertheless replaced J.D. Irving's 2020 AD cash deposit rate with a dumping rate for the 2019 period, the complaint said. In doing so, the agency acted "arbitrarily and inconsistent with Congress's intent," the exporter argued. When no one requested a 2020 review, this signaled that "both sides" agreed that the cash deposit rate in effect was an accurate measure of J.D. Irving's dumping level for assessing final AD duties during 2020 and that the most recent AD cash deposit rate was the "appropriate estimated dumping margin for J.D. Irving going forward," the company said (J.D. Irving, Limited v. U.S., CIT #21-00641).

The Commerce Department should have reopened the record during its voluntary remand period to consider the question of affiliation between antidumping duty respondent OCTAL and one of its U.S. customers, OCTAL told the Court of International Trade in a Dec. 22 reply brief. Since Commerce raised the issue so late in the AD review, the record wasn't "high quality" and OCTAL didn't have a chance to properly respond to the affiliation accusations, OCTAL said (OCTAL v. U.S., CIT #20-03697).