The Commerce Department improperly used Cohen's d test to root out masked dumping because the agency violated statistical assmptions inherent to the test, SeAH Steel told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the opening brief of its appeal. While Commerce justified its use of the test because it used a whole population, not a sample, SeAH said the academic literature shows the d test was meant to be used as a measure of effect size only when the data comes from samples with "normal distributions, with roughly equal variance, and a sufficient number of data-points" (Stupp Corp. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1663).

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The Commerce Department said that, after reviewing the facts, ship building company Nur Gemicilik ve Tic., an affiliate of countervailing duty respondent Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret, is not a cross-owned input supplier of goods primarily dedicated to the production of downstream products. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on July 24, Commerce changed its tune regarding why the input in question, steel scrap, was mainly dedicated to the production of downstream steel goods as part of the 2018 CVD review on steel concrete rebar from Turkey (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 21-00565).

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's defense of its decisions to impose lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs "makes a mockery of a detailed law in which Congress circumscribed what USTR may do and on what basis," four administrative and trade law professors said in an amicus brief. Filing at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit July 24, the professors said USTR did not have the statutory authority to impose the retaliatory duties on $320 billion worth of Chinese goods because the statute did not allow retaliation to serve as the basis for the duties, nor did it allow the drastically larger price tag (HMTX Industries, et al. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1891).

The Court of International Trade on July 21 upheld surrogate value picks for five inputs in an antidumping duty administrative review on activated carbon from China. The five inputs are carbonized material, coal tar, hydrochloric acid, steam and bituminous coal.

Importer PrimeSource Building Products moved for a partial stay of the Court of International Trade's order dismissing its suit challenging President Donald Trump's expansion of Section 232 steel and aluminum duties onto "derivative" products. PrimeSource said it wants the order stayed pending the resolution of its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (Primesource Building Products v. U.S., CIT # 20-00032).

The Commerce Department illegally relied on unverified data from respondent Saffron Living Co. in an antidumping duty investigation on mattresses from Thailand, the Court of International Trade ruled in a July 20 opinion. While the government claimed that because Commerce was unable to verify Saffron's information, it could use the exporter's information as facts otherwise available, Judge M. Miller Baker said this reading would "eviscerate the separate requirement" that Commerce verify all information relied on in making a final determination.

The Court of International Trade in a July 20 opinion refused to invalidate its past order instructing CBP to reliquidate Target Corp.'s metal-top ironing tables, saying that doing so would "turn the clock back over 40 years" prior to the Customs Courts Act's passage and "again call into question whether a party before the Court could obtain full and complete relief." Reversing the order as Target requests would "elevate the principle of finality" of liquidation "over the inherent power" of the trade court under Article III of the Constitution, Judge Leo Gordon said.

The Court of International Trade in a July 19 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's decision to raise the dumping margins in the 2018-19 administrative review of the antidumping duties on heavy-walled rectangular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes from Mexico for mandatory respondents Maquilacero and Prolamsa. The margins were raised from 0% to 3.48% for Maquilacero. and from 0% to 2.11%. for Prolamsa.

The Commerce Department has "muddled together irrelevant and tangential statistical concepts in a future effort to obscure" that the agency "is not really using" the Cohen's d test to root out "masked" dumping, the Canadian government and a group of Canadian companies argued in a proposed amicus brief. Filing the brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a suit over the antidumping duty investigation on utility scale wind towers from Canada, the Canadian government said Commerce "plugs numbers into the Cohen's d formula," but the inputs do not match the criteria under which the formula provides "meaningful information" (Marmen Inc. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1877).