The Court of International Trade on Dec. 8 sustained the Commerce Department's fourth remand results in a case over an administrative review of the antidumping duty order on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China, covering entries from 2013-14. Judge Claire Kelly upheld Commerce's switch to valuing a key solar cell input using Bulgarian imports rather than Thai imports after the court previously said the agency's use of the Thai surrogate data was improper. Under "respectful protest," Commerce used the Bulgarian data, and none of the plaintiffs, led by Solarworld Americas, Inc., objected.

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 8 sustained the Commerce Department's fourth remand results in a case over an administrative review of the antidumping duty order on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China, covering entries from 2014-15. In her second opinion of the day, nearly identical to the first, Judge Claire Kelly upheld Commerce's switch to valuing nitrogen using Mexican imports rather than Thai imports after the court previously said the agency's use of the Thai surrogate data was improper. Under "respectful protest," Commerce used the Mexican data, and none of the plaintiffs, led by Canadian Solar International Limited, objected.

The Court of International Trade remanded the Commerce Department's final results in the first administrative review of the antidumping duty order on hot-rolled steel flat products from Australia, in a Nov. 30 opinion made public Dec. 8. Judge Richard Eaton remanded Commerce's use of total adverse facts available after finding that the agency failed to show that mandatory respondent BlueScope's responses created a gap in the record and didn't provide the company with a notice of deficient responses. The court ordered that Commerce shall use BlueScope's quantity and value submissions unless it gives a "reasoned explanation" as to why this data is unusable for key considerations in the review.

The Court of International Trade upheld a Commerce Department scope ruling finding solar panel roof mountings from China Custom Manufacturing and Greentec within the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China. In his Dec. 6 opinion, Judge Stephen Vaden sided with Commerce in finding that the mounts do not qualify for the finished merchandise exception and instead constitute subassemblies which are subject to the orders. Vaden did so even over plaintiffs' arguments that a previous interpretation of the finished merchandise exclusion would have excluded the mounts from the orders.

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 7 granted partial victory to an importer challenging the assessment of antidumping and countervailing duties on its entries of solar cells, even though it says the entries preceded the date Commerce changed the scope of the relevant AD/CVD orders to include the products. Aireko Construction said the entries should be reliquidated at zero percent AD/CVD rates. However, the importer had challenged the assessments based on a denied protest, rather than file its case under the proper jurisdiction to challenge Commerce's instructions to CBP. Without a valid challenge to those instructions, CIT ruled that it could only instruct CBP to reliquidate the entries according to Commerce's instructions, free of CV duties but at an AD duty rate of 42.33%.

The Court of International Trade rejected U.S. Steel Corp.'s bid to intervene in a Section 232 exclusion denial case in a Dec. 3 order, finding that U.S. Steel does not have a "legally protectable interest that will be directly affected by the outcome of this action." The order echoes a previous ruling from the CIT, currently under appeal, that said U.S. Steel doesn't have the right to intervene in a Section 232 exclusion denial case since it wouldn't be guaranteed the sale of goods denied the exclusion. In the Dec. 3 opinion, the court also denied U.S. Steel's motion to stay the case pending the appeal of the previous intervention ruling since the plaintiff may be prejudiced by the stay.

The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 2 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's final results in the 2017 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on steel reinforcing bar from Turkey. Judge Claire Kelly found that it was reasonable for Commerce to assign non-mandatory respondent Colakoglu a rate from a previous administrative review where it did serve as a mandatory respondent, even though both actual mandatory respondents in the review at issue in the case received de minimis rates. Kelly also said that it did not matter that record evidence did not support the CVD rate received by Colakoglu since it is its responsible to populate the record, which it failed to do.

The Court of International Trade on Nov. 30 remanded the Commerce Department's final results in the 2017-2018 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain pasta from Italy giving the agency another shot at explaining its adverse inference application. In the review, affiliated plaintiffs Ghigi 1870 and Pasta Zara served as a mandatory respondent. Due to a programming error, Ghigi/Zara revealed during the post-verification stage that its most recent U.S. sales dates were errant. Instead of reverting back to the old U.S. sales dates, Commerce hit Ghigi//Zara with adverse facts available. The court upheld the use of facts available but not the adverse inference. The court also upheld Commerce's rejection of Ghigi/Zara's post-verification arguments for different classification systems for the pasta's protein content and shape.

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in two cases over a scope ruling in the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations into steel trailer wheels from China. After previously sustaining the scope revision itself but remanding the retroactive imposition of the duties from the date of the preliminary determination in the investigations, Judge Gary Katzmann then sustained Commerce's redetermination after it dropped the retroactive duties. One opinion was in a case over the antidumping investigation, and the other was in a case over the countervailing duty investigation.

The fact that an antidumping respondent used false advertising about what its products are made of is immaterial to the AD investigation over those products, the Court of International Trade said in a Nov. 18 opinion, rejecting the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available. During the investigation into wooden cabinets and vanities from China, Commerce discovered that respondent Dalian Meisen Woodworking Co. advertised its products as made of maple when they were actually made of birch, prompting Commerce to use AFA. But since Meisen complied with Commerce proceedings and the agency doesn't have the ability under the AD statutes to "police false advertising violations," the court held that the agency can't apply AFA and must use Meisen's actual information to calculate its dumping rate.