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 duty drawback methodology applied by the Commerce Department to Turkish exporter Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret is "fundamentally flawed" and cuts against the statute's plain language, antidumping duty petitioner Aluminum Association Common Alloy Aluminum Sheet Trade Enforcement Working Group told the Court of International Trade in a brief on Commerce's remand results on the AD investigation on common alloy aluminum sheet from Turkey (Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT #21-00246).

The Court of International Trade should not have found that importer Worldwide Door Components' and Columbia Aluminum Products' door thresholds were excluded from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, petitioner Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in its opening brief. The committee said that both the Commerce Department and the Federal Circuit have repeatedly said that the scope's descriptions of "extrusions" covers aluminum extrusions incorporated into assemblies (Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1532).

Importer Amsted Rail Co. filed a joint stipulation of voluntary dismissal in a conflict-of-interest suit at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit against the International Trade Commission for not barring attorney Daniel Pickard and his firm Buchanan Ingersoll from an AD/CVD injury proceeding. The Court of International Trade previously dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, pointing out that the case could potentially be refiled once the injury determination wraps up (see 2211160057) (Amsted Rail Co. v. ITC, Fed. Cir. # 23-1355).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a June 30 order accepted the amended opening brief and addendum filed by Kazakh exporter Tau-Ken Temir in a case on the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available due to missed filing deadlines in an antidumping duty review. In submitting its amended brief, TKT submitted a version of its original opening brief with corrections sought by the clerk of the court and also a version with these corrections plus corrections additionally requested by the exporter. The appellate court accepted only the first form of these submissions (Tau-Ken Temir v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2204).

CBP did not misapply the substantial evidence standard in finding that importers American Pacific Plywood, U.S. Global Forest and InterGlobal Forest evaded the antidumping and countervailing duties on hardwood plywood products from China, the Court of International Trade ruled in a June 22 opinion made public June 30.

The Tariff Act of 1930 does not provide the exclusive means for recovering evaded antidumping duties, the Anti-Fraud Coalition said in a June 26 amicus brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The False Claims Act stands as a "complementary enforcement mechanism" used when an importer defrauds the U.S. by filing false customs forms to evade duties, the brief said. The coalition filed its brief in an FCA suit on whether Sigma Corp., along with other companies, evaded antidumping duties on welded couplets from China by submitting false customs information (Island Industries v. Sigma Corp., 9th Cir. # 22-55063).

Judge Pauline Newman should continue to be assigned new cases during an investigation into her fitness as a judge, she said in a request for an injunction filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia June 27. Represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, Newman sought an injunction against a decision by the Judicial Council of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit barring her from being assigned new cases, claiming that the ban assaults her "judicial independence" and arguing that it infringes on her due process rights and violates Congress’ “exclusive right to impeach and remove Article III judges” (Pauline Newman v. Kimberly A. Moore, D.D.C. # 23-01334).

The White House on June 28 announced its nominations to fill two vacancies on the Court of International Trade.

The Commerce Department stuck with its use of the Cohen's d test as part of its effort to root out "masked" dumping in an antidumping review after adding certain academic literature to the record as instructed by the Court of International Trade. Submitting its remand results to the trade court June 27, Commerce said certain statistical assumptions -- normality of the distribution, equal variances and around the same sample size -- don't limit the agency's use of the d test, given that it used the entire population of data as opposed to a sample (Nexteel Co. v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 18-00083).