Commerce Wants Voluntary Remand to Fix Liquidation Instructions Error

The Court of International Trade granted the Commerce Department's request for a voluntary remand in a case over an error the agency made in its liquidation instructions following an antidumping review. Chief Judge Mark Barnett gave the court until Oct. 15 to submit the results of its redetermination (Optima Steel International, LLC, et al. v. U.S., CIT #21-00327).

Commerce filed for the voluntary remand on Oct. 1 in a case over the administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain hot-rolled steel flat products from Japan in which Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co., one of the plaintiffs, served as a mandatory respondent. The other plaintiff, Optima Steel International, was the importer of record. Tokyo Steel received its own individual rate during the review, resulting in Commerce issuing instructions telling CBP to liquidate Tokyo Steel's entries at this rate.

But in the instructions, Commerce used the nickname of an unaffiliated Japanese trading company. In the remand motion, Commerce admitted the mistake and sought a redo to fix it. The Department of Justice consulted with the plaintiffs' counsel, Daniel Porter of Curtis Mallet-Prevost, who consented to the remand motion. The plaintiffs had most recently expressed being "extremely frustrated" with the DOJ's request for an extension of time to respond to the complaint in CIT (see 2109080037).