The Commerce Department said on remand at the Court of International Trade that Germany's Konzessionsabgabenverordnung (KAV) program, which exempts from a fee gas and power pipeline companies that sell electricity below a certain price, isn't de facto specific. The fees would otherwise be passed on to consumers. Commerce made the finding on Sept. 17 after being instructed by the trade court to conduct a de facto specificity analysis (BGH Edelstahl Siegen v. U.S., CIT # 21-00080).

Importer Cozy Comfort Co. moved on Sept. 17 to exclude the testimony of sales and marketing lecturer Patricia Concannon regarding the tariff classification of The Comfy, a wearable blanket. The motion was issued ahead of a bench trial on the classification of the item (Cozy Comfort Company v. U.S., CIT # 22-00173).

Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week, in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

The Court of International Trade on Sept. 17 sent back the Commerce Department's use of a quarterly cost methodology to analyze exporter Officine Tecnosider's sales during the 2020-21 review of the antidumping duty order on steel plate from Italy to address "shortcomings" in its analysis.

The U.S. “respectfully disagree[d]” with recent Court of International Trade cases that have held that the government cannot hear counterclaims seeking to reclassify products under a new heading. These holdings, it said Sept. 13, go against 28 U.S.C. Section 1583, “its legislative history, and decades of consistent practice immediately following its enactment” (BASF Corp. v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 13-00318).

A group of cabinet importers, led by ACProducts, filed a pair of complaints at the Court of International Trade on Sept. 16 contesting the Commerce Department's final scope rulings on wooden cabinets further processed in Vietnam and Malaysia. The six-count complaints contested Commerce's decision to open the inquiries and claimed that the scope rulings expanded the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on wooden cabinets from China beyond their plain-language scope to include "semi-finished components" (ACProducts v. United States, CIT #'s 24-00155, -00156).

Responding to a trade court remand order (see 2404230031), the Commerce Department said it has reconsidered its decision and chosen to apply the subsidies received by unaffiliated suppliers of lumber to a few expedited Canadian lumber review respondents -- though this ultimately had no effect on those respondents’ countervailing duty rates (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. U.S., CIT # 19-00122).

U.S. seafood seller Luscious Seafood argued on Sept. 13 that the Commerce Department misinterpreted the statute when it found that the company didn't qualify as a bona fide wholesaler of the domestic like product. As a result of its finding, Commerce found Luscious' request for administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam invalid (Luscious Seafood v. United States, CIT # 24-00069).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Sept. 11 denied a motion for rehearing from the governments of Canada and Quebec and exporter Marmen Inc. regarding the court's decision sustaining the countervailability of a Canadian tax program. All the judges in regular active service -- Judges Kimberly Moore, Alan Lourie, Timothy Dyk, Sharon Prost, Jimmie Reyna, Richard Taranto, Raymond Chen, Todd Hughes, Kara Stoll, Tiffany Cunningham and Leonard Stark -- agreed to deny the petition (Government of Quebec v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-1807).

A U.S. importer of mattresses from Burma brought an action to the Court of International Trade on Sept. 11 challenging the International Trade Commission’s final results of a critical circumstances review (Pay Less Here v. U.S., CIT # 24-00152).