The Commerce Department decided to value a key solar cell input using Bulgarian imports rather than Thai imports after the Court of International Trade said the agency's use of the Thai surrogate data was improper, it told the court in Sept. 27 remand results (Solarworld Americas, Inc. et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #16-00134).

The International Trade Commission had no authority to deny lawyers representing LG Electronics access to confidential business information during a safeguard proceeding on solar cells from China, the lawyers argued in a Sept. 24 brief at the Court of International Trade. The congressional mandate for granting administrative protective orders (APOs) merely tells the ITC what it "shall" do, so commission had no grounds to deny a timely filed APO application, the Curtis Mallet-Prevost lawyers said (LG Electronics USA, Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT 21-00520).

Rimco, a steel importer, challenged the antidumping and countervailing duties assessed on its steel wheel imports from China as being excessive fines in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in a Sept. 22 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Rimco said that the extremely high and excessive AD/CVD rates were not remedial but in fact penal in nature, leading to the deprivation of property when CBP imposed the AD/CV duties (Rimco, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00537).

Entries of appearance to get on Commerce’s new annual service lists for antidumping and countervailing duty scope and anti-circumvention inquiries are due Oct. 27, the agency said in a follow-up notice to its recent final rule (see 2109160058 and 2109160062). Parties on the list will receive notifications of all scope ruling applications and requests for circumvention inquiries.

A company challenging CBP's finding that it evaded antidumping and countervailing duties on xanthan gum should have its lawsuit tossed because it failed to appeal CBP's denial of its protest on the relevant entries, even though the importer filed its case under CIT's Section 1581(c) jurisdiction, which covers AD/CVD proceedings, the Department of Justice said in a Sept. 22 reply brief at the Court of International Trade (All One God Faith, Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT #20-00164).

The Commerce Department's mandatory respondent selection process in a countervailing duty case on wood flooring resembled "Russian roulette" due to fundamental errors in the CBP data used to make the respondent picks, plaintiffs in a case at the Court of International Trade said in four briefs (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co., Ltd., et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #20-03885).

Untethering the six-year statute of limitations for customs bonds from the date an entry is liquidated would impair the ability of customs sureties to function, and CBP’s attempt to collect on a bond issued by Aegis Security Insurance eight years after liquidation is an unreasonable delay that would cause real harm to the surety, Aegis said in a brief filed Sept. 16 at the Court of International Trade.

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The Court of International Trade said the Commerce Department had sufficient evidence in its changed circumstances review that found that the situation had not changed regarding countervailable subsidies for Argentina's biodiesel industry. Judge Gary Katzmann, in a Sept. 21 opinion, also held that Commerce, which originally found changed circumstances but later switched back to a finding of no changed circumstances, acted in accordance with the law.

The Court of International Trade rejected an importer's bid for reconsideration of its challenge of the countervailing duty rate assessed on its tire imports. The court found for the second time that the importer lacked proper jurisdiction due to an untimely filed protest of a liquidation decision. “The lesson is both clear and stark: Don’t sit on your rights,” Judge Stephen Alexander Vaden said.