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.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remanded in part and sustained in part the Commerce Department's final determination in an antidumping investigation into welded line pipe from South Korea in a July 15 opinion. The appellate court affirmed all but one of the Court of International Trade's findings, sending the case back to Commerce to reconsider the use of Cohen's d test in its differential pricing analysis when seeking to assign a dumping margin for goods having undergone "masked dumping."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a Court of International Trade ruling dismissing an importer's challenge of CBP's assessment of antidumping and countervailing duties for improper jurisdiction, in a July 14 opinion. The Federal Circuit found that TR International Trading Co., which filed its case under the trade court's Section 1581(i) "residual" jurisdiction provision, could have instead challenged a denied protest under 1581(a) or a scope ruling under 1581(c), rendering Section 1581(i) unavailable. TRI had challenged CBP's finding that the company's citric acid imports from India were of Chinese origin and subject to AD/CV duties.

President Donald Trump did not violate procedural timelines when he raised tariffs on Turkish steel from 25 to 50% in August 2018, beyond the 90-day deadline and 15-day implementation period for initial Section 232 tariffs, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a July 13 opinion. Reversing a Court of International Trade decision, the Federal Circuit threw a wrench in a key argument against certain Section 232 tariffs that action beyond the statutory timelines should not be allowed.

The Court of International Trade remanded the Commerce Department's final determination in the antidumping duty investigation on wooden cabinets and vanities from China, in a July 12 order. In its case, exporter Ancientree challenged three aspects of the review -- Commerce's selection of Romania as the primary surrogate country, the agency's financial ratio calculation and its selection of Harmonized Tariff Schedule headings for surrogate value inputs. Judge Gary Katzmann found that the Romania pick and surrogate values selection were properly supported but that Commerce's explanation of its financial ratio calculation was arbitrary and capricious.

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's second remand results in the fourth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on large power transformers from Korea in a July 9 opinion. Chief Judge Mark Barnett upheld the results after Commerce dropped its adverse inference against Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. and Hyosung Corporation when calculating their antidumping duty rates. The result left both respondents in the review with a zero percent duty rate.

The Court of International Trade issued a pair of decisions on July 12 applying precedent from a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision which found that strike pin anchors are not within the scope of the antidumping duty orders on steel nails from Vietnam. One of the decisions found masonry anchors from Midwest Fastener Corp. aren't subject to antidumping and countervailing duty orders on steel nails from Vietnam. The other, brought by Fastenal Company Purchasing, said that the company's zinc and nylon anchors "do not fall within the scope of Commerce’s antidumping order on certain steel nails from China." The Federal Circuit opinion, titled OMG, Inc. v. U.S., rejected Commerce's logic that the drive pin component of the anchors is basically a nail.

The Court of International Trade will stop liquidation of unliquidated entries subject to the List 3 or 4A Section 301 China tariffs imported by the thousands of plaintiffs in the Section 301 litigation, a majority of judges on the three-judge CIT panel said in a July 6 opinion that granted a preliminary injunction. "To give the parties time to implement appropriate procedures, gather pertinent information, and otherwise take necessary action to comply with this order, the court will temporarily restrain liquidation of any unliquidated entries of merchandise imported from China by any plaintiffs in the Section 301 Cases which are subject to List 3 or List 4A duties," it said.

In a June 29 opinion, the Court of International Trade ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over one of 12 entries of plywood from China in a customs case since the importer only protested its first liquidation, but did not protest a second reliquidation. The lawsuit over the remaining 11 entries that the importer fully protested continues. The importer, Bral Corporation, says the imported plywood was defective and should therefore be reassessed duties at 18% of its original value.

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's remand results dropping a particular market situation adjustment to the cost of production for antidumping duties on South Korean heavy walled rectangular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes, in a June 24 decision. Mandatory respondent Dong-A Steel Co. is now set to see its dumping margin drop to 11%, and Kukje Steel Co. to 7.89%. Since HiSteel was not party to the litigation, it's "not entitled to revised rates calculated on remand," Katzmann said.