The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's second remand results in an antidumping review, finding that the agency properly relied on data from Xeneta XS rather than Maersk Line when calculating the respondent's surrogate ocean freight expenses in an Aug. 10 opinion. The case came from the fourth administrative review of the antidumping order on crystaline silicon photovoltaic cells, whether or not assembled into modules, from China. Twice before, Judge Claire Kelly raised concerns over Commerce's initial selection of Maersk for the surrogate freight expenses.

The Court of International Trade remanded the Commerce Department's second remand results in the first administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain steel nails from Taiwan in a July 30 decision released publicly Aug. 6. After issuing two prior opinions in the case, Chief Judge Mark Barnett considered Commerce's second remand results, ultimately sending them back so the agency can further explain or reconsider its use of a simple average of the mandatory respondents' rates to establish the AD duty rate for non-individually examined respondents. However, Barnett did sustain Commerce's use of transaction-specific margins to corroborate the petition rate.

The Court of International Trade sustained the final determination in the administrative review of the antidumping duty order on chlorinated isocyanurates from China in an Aug. 5 opinion. Plaintiffs Heze Huayi Chemical Co. and Juancheng Kangtai Chemical Co. launched their challenge to contest the selection of Mexico over Malaysia as a surrogate nation for calculating the AD duty, to find that Mexico has the highest quality information and to adjust the Mexican "freight-on-board" values to a "cost of insurance and freight" mark. For all three contentions, Judge Timothy Reif sided with the government, finding that Mexico is a "significant producer" of "comparable merchandise," that its selection of the Mexican conglomerate CYDSA's financial statements was backed by substantial evidence and that the adjustment of the data to a CIF basis was permitted.

The Court of International Trade issued two opinions on Aug. 3 sustaining the Commerce Department's remand results which held that Simpson Strong-Tie Company's split-drive anchors and crimp drive anchors do not fall within the scope of the antidumping order on certain steel nails from China. Following a Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision, OMG, Inc. v. United States, Commerce changed its findings for both products to exclude them from the order. The Federal Circuit held in OMG that masonry anchors are not nails and thus excluded from the order. Since Simpson's split-drive and crimp drive anchors are similar, they are also excluded, the court said.

The Court of International Trade stayed the liquidation of steel and aluminum "derivative" imports potentially subject to the Section 232 national security tariffs in an Aug. 2 decision. After the trade court struck down the expansion of the tariffs onto the derivative products for violating procedural time limits, it instructed CBP to liquidate entries affected by the decision without the 25% tariff. This liquidation will be stayed pending the appeal of the decision. The court cited a recent Federal Circuit ruling, Transpacific Steel LLC v. United States, in its decision. The Federal Circuit in that decision ruled that tariff action by the president taken after the same procedural time limits was allowed since it was part of a planned course of action.

Court of International Trade Judge Claire Kelly remanded the Commerce Department's use of surrogate data from Thailand in two antidumping administrative reviews into crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China in two nearly identical July 28 rulings. The judge sought to bring the cases in line with a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision that found that Commerce's methodology was unreasonable. Commerce improperly continued to use Thai import data as a surrogate for data on a key input of the solar cells, Kelly said.

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's negative antidumping and countervailing duty circumvention rulings on certain hardwood plywood products from China in a July 21 opinion, finding that Shelter Forest International Acquisition's goods were not later-developed merchandise. Commerce had reversed its initial finding of circumvention on remand after a previous CIT ruling in the case. The Coalition for Fair Trade in Hardwood Plywood challenged Commerce's findings, claiming that since a component of the glue was a trade secret, it could not be considered commercially available, making it later-developed. The court disagreed, ruling that whether the trade secret status of one part is irrelevant as to whether the plywood was actually “present in the market.”

The Court of International Trade denied a Vietnamese fish exporter's bid to obtain a separate antidumping rate from the country-wide rate in a July 6 opinion made public on July 21, finding the exporter failed to rebut the presumption of de facto government control. In the 15th administrative review of the antidumping order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam, the Commerce Department had denied I.D.I. International Development and Investment Corporation's application for a separate AD rate. The agency had said that the company didn't have autonomy from the government in making its management selection decisions, as evidenced by a government employee on its corporate board.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a July 20 ruling found that the Commerce Department's initial post-sale price adjustment based on a late delivery penalty in an antidumping case was properly supported. The appellate court reversed a Court of International Trade decision which found that Commerce should have adjusted the price by the entirety of the exporter's penalty payment and not just one-third of it, as Commerce originally did.

The Court of International Trade rejected the Commerce Department's rationale for applying a particular market situation adjustment to a sales-below-cost test in an antidumping case, in a July 19 opinion. Having repeatedly ruled that no such adjustment can be made, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves remanded the results in the 2015-16 administrative review of the antidumping order on circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea for the third time. Judge Choe-Groves held that the statute instructs Commerce to only make PMS adjustments when calculating constructed value in an AD case and to only use sales in the “ordinary course of trade” when establishing normal value. Since PMS sales are not within the ordinary course of trade, they should be dropped from a normal value calculation rather than used to adjust the cost of production, she said.