Imported glass mosaic tiles from China should have been granted Section 301 tariff exclusions due to their size, said importer Anatolia Tile & Stone in a May 31 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Anatolia is challenging CBP's denial of 42 protests, which sought to remove the 25% duty assigned by CBP at liquidation. The company asked the court to order CBP to reliquidate the entries and refund any excess duties paid with interest (Anatolia Tile & Stone v. U.S., CIT # 21-00245).

The Commerce Department asked the Court of International Trade for a voluntary remand in a countervailing duty case to reconsider its use of an adverse inference against exporter JA Solar Technology Yangzhou Co. related to its alleged use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program since the agency "refined its practice." In its opposition to JA Solar's and Risen Energy Co.'s motion for judgment in a case on an administrative review on solar cells from China, the U.S. said it altered its handling of verifying non-use of the EBCP to only require non-use certifications from all U.S. importers and not all downstream U.S. customers (Risen Energy Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00231).

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The Commerce Department decided to use adverse facts available related to antidumping duty respondent Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret's billing adjustments following a Court of International Trade order questioning whether Assan acted to the best of its ability in its remand results submitted to the trade court May 31. The agency also revised the duty drawback adjustment methodology it applied to Assan by dividing the amount of duties exempted by a Turkish duty exemption program during the AD investigation period over the total quantity of exports made under the program to calculate a per-unit drawback adjustment. The result, if sustained, would be a de minimis rate for Assan (Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 21-00246).

The Commerce Department didn't adequately explain its decision to include four types of income categories when calculating the financial ratios for surrogate company Ayes Celikhasir in the antidumping duty investigation on metal lockers from China, the Court of International Trade ruled in a May 30 opinion. Petitioner and plaintiff List Industries said that if these income categories were excluded from the ratio calculation, Ayes would have been revealed not to be a profitable company, barring it from being used as a surrogate.

The Court of International Trade overlooked the principle that the Commerce Department has the burden to support its use of the expected method in antidumping cases, importer PrimeSource Building Products argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The non-selected respondent filed the suit to challenge Commerce's decision to weight average two adverse facts available rates when calculating the non-selected respondents' rate in an administrative review on steel nails from Taiwan (PrimeSource Building Products v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2128).

CBP illegally failed to apply exclusions for Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs to eight shipments of hot wrought steel round bars even though the exclusions were granted after the shipments entered the U.S., importer Saarsteel argued in a complaint last week at the Court of International Trade. The company said it is CBP's practice to allow an importer to claim a granted exclusion via a post-summary correction or a protest when the exclusion was granted after the entry was made but "relates back to a submission date covering the entry" (Saarsteel Inc. v. United States, CIT # 21-00271).

Fourteen types of frozen fruit mixtures, five of which contain vegetable ingredients, should be classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 0811.90.80 as "other" frozen fruits, dutiable at 14.5%, the Court of International Trade ruled. Judge Stephen Vaden said the merchandise is properly classified under heading 0811 since the term "Fruit ... frozen" describes these goods in whole.

The Commerce Department illegally relied on raw honey acquisition costs as a proxy to calculate costs of production in the antidumping duty investigation into raw honey from India, despite those respondents withholding information and impeding the investigation, the American Honey Producers Association and the Sioux Honey Association argued in a May 23 brief at the Court of International Trade (American Honey Producers Association v. U.S., CIT # 22-00195).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit again rejected the Coalition of Freight Coupler Producers' bid to redact 180 unique words in its reply brief in an attorney conflict-of-interest suit. Judge Alan Prost said most of the information the coalition is seeking to redact was made publicly available in the Court of International Trade proceeding, and said information relating to the terms of an engagement agreement the coalition sought to redact was "disclosed without objection" in importer Amsted Rail's opening and reply briefs (Amsted Rail Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1355).