In Court of International Trade oral arguments June 25, a judge questioned both parties as to the reason that the Commerce Department made an allegedly ex parte visit to a domestic competitor while it was in the process of reaching a scope ruling on an importer’s ceramic tile (see 2402010046) (Elysium Tiles v. U.S., CIT # 23-00041).

The Supreme Court of the U.S. on June 28 overturned a hallmark of administrative law that had stood for four decades: the court's principle of deferring to federal agencies' interpretation of ambiguous statutes established in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Commerce Department on June 26 called an importer’s claim that it could have double-counted industry support for an antidumping investigation “misplaced,” saying that double-counting wasn’t possible normally under the department's calculation method and that there was no evidence U.S. producers had “literally counted each ton of pipe they produced twice” (Tenaris Bay City v. U.S., CIT # 22-00343).

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's decision to pick a secondary mandatory respondent in an antidumping review despite temporal limits on the selection process. However, Judge Mark Barnett sent back the agency's methodology for picking the respondent due to its failure to explain its removal of Shandong Linglong Tyre Co. from the list of eligible exporters.

The Commerce Department can't extend an antidumping and countervailing duty circumvention finding based on adverse facts available for one mandatory respondent on a "country-wide basis," exporter Trina Solar Co. argued June 25. Filing a motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade, Trina said Commerce made "no company-specific findings" on whether all the cooperative companies were circumventing the AD/CVD orders on Chinese solar cells and, as a matter of law, can't impose the circumvention finding on those companies (Trina Solar (Vietnam) Science & Technology Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00228).

The U.S. in a June 25 brief defended the Commerce Department's finding that 16 of exporter Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) Co.'s input suppliers are government authorities based on adverse facts available, which was used due to the Chinese government's failure to provide adequate information (Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00136).

The Commerce Department reduced the antidumping duty rate for a collapsed entity, made up of exporter Siemens Gamesa, affiliated supplier Windar Renovables and five of Windar's subsidiaries, from 73% to 28.55% after reverting to the use of partial adverse facts available for the entity (Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy v. U.S., CIT # 21-00449).

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CBP announced a new Enforce and Protect Act investigation, saying it has reasonable suspicion that Global Natural Ingredients evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on xanthan gum from China and it has enacted interim measures against the importer.

Exporter Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Co. on June 21 petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for either a panel or en banc rehearing of its decision to include dual-stenciled pipe in the scope of the antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Thailand (see 2405150027) (Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2181).