The Commerce Department is set to increase the antidumping duty rate it assigned to Best Mattresses and Rose Lion in an AD investigation on mattresses from Cambodia, it said in a remand redetermination dated July 17. Commerce reopened the record and issued a supplemental questionnaire to the petitioners, asking for further explanation of the process by which they retrieved Emirates Sleep’s financial statements and how the statements constituted publicly available information (Best Mattresses International v. U.S., CIT # 21-00281).

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.

Proposed changes by the Commerce Department to its antidumping and countervailing duty regulations were met with a diverse array of responses from governments, producers, importers, lawyers and others, with particular focus on the agency's proposal to consider intellectual property, human rights and environmental protections in AD/CVD proceedings and proposed changes that would allow particular market situation adjustments to the sales-below-cost test.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative exceeded its authority in imposing the lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs on China, covering a total of $320 billion worth of Chinese imports, plaintiff-appellants in the massive case against the duties, led by HTMX Industries and Jasco Products Co., argued in their opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Appealing the Court of International Trade's decision upholding the tariffs (see 2204010061), the companies said USTR did not have the authority to set the duties since the authority was not directly delegated by Congress, in violation of the "major questions doctrine" (HMTX Industries v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1891).

The Commerce Department reversed its imposition of total adverse facts available on antidumping duty respondent Oman Fasteners in its July 17 remand results, resulting in a complete removal of a 154.33% AD rate for the company, Oman Fasteners, Commerce had ruled had failed to cooperate to the best of its ability because it did not submit all of its responses to a supplemental questionnaire by the deadline. The single late submission missed Commerce's cut-off time by 16 minutes and Court of International Trade Judge M. Miller Baker said that the ensuing suit was "not a close case" when he remanded the results in a February opinion (see 2302280040) (Oman Fasteners v. U.S., CIT # 22-00348)..

The Commerce Department "misapplied the statutory standard" for picking surrogate countries in the 2018-19 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam by excluding candidate countries that have a comparable level of economic development, the Court of International Trade ruled in a July 7 opinion made public July 17.

The Commerce Department shouldn't have relied on adverse facts available in an antidumping duty review on tapered roller bearings from China for a fully cooperative entity that attempted to obtain information from its suppliers but couldn't secure their cooperation, Chinese bearing exporter Shanghai Tainai Bearing said in a July 13 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade. Court precedent doesn't require a party to provide information not in its possession and which it can't reasonably obtain, the company said (Shanghai Tainai Bearing v. U.S., CIT # 23-00020).

The Court of International Trade on July 14 upheld the Commerce Department's decisions in an antidumping duty review to disregard respondent Nexteel's accounting method and classify the company's losses from suspension of production lines as general and administrative expenses (G&A) instead of costs of goods sold (COGS). Judge Claire Kelly said that Commerce, in the 2016-2017 administrative review on welded line pipe from South Korea, "adequately explains that the depreciation and other costs" linked with suspended production lines "are more akin to a company-wide cost" instead of a cost of manufacturing borne by specific products.

The Commerce Department stuck with its use of adverse facts available for countervailing duty respondent Risen Energy for its alleged use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program, in spite of a second Court of International Trade remand requiring Commerce to reconsider the issue, among others. In the remand results, Commerce also reevaluated its use of Thai land prices when calculating benefits for respondents JA Solar and Risen and its benchmark data for ocean freight, dropping JA Solar's CVD rate from 7.75% to 7.68% and Risen's from 9.84% to 9.69% (Risen Energy v. U.S., CIT # 20-03912).

The Court of International Trade in a July 13 opinion dismissed a lawsuit from PrimeSource Building Products against President Donald Trump's move to expand Section 232 national security tariffs onto steel and aluminum "derivative" products pursuant to the mandate issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.