The Commerce Department has the statutory authority to conduct expedited countervailing duty reviews, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held April 25. Reversing a Court of International Trade ruling overturning the agency's authority to carry out such reviews, Judges Timothy Dyk, Jimmie Reyna and Richard Taranto said the legal ground for the review process is found in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act's enactment of certain provisions that favor individual company determinations and the URAA's "grant of regulatory-implementation power to Commerce."

DOJ said it recently discovered that it made inaccurate statements in a now-concluded case involving tobacco excise taxes for cigar wrappers, telling the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in an April 21 motion that it said samples of the goods relied on in the case were from from a specific entry when they were not, and that it has only identified the source of six of the nine samples considered by the court (New Image Global v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 19-2444).

The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's refusal to adjust its threshold for differentiating between types of pasta in its duty calculations in the 2018-19 review of the antidumping duty order on pasta from Italy. Respondent La Molisana had argued the agency's "breakpoint" of 12.5% protein content did not reflect the market reality, saying the true point separating premium from regular pasta was 13.5% protein content. In his April 24 opinion, Judge Richard Eaton said the company's evidence, while unrebutted, was not applicable industrywide, making it "unreliable and insufficient."

There is "absolutely no substantive justification" to give the Commerce Department another 91 days to review NLMK Pennsylvania's Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests, the company argued in an April 20 brief opposing the extension bid at the Court of International Trade (NLMK Pennsylvania v. United States, CIT # 21-00507).

The Commerce Department wrongly said there was ambiguity in the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood from China, the Court of International Trade ruled. Judge Mark Barnett, remanding Commerce's scope ruling, said the scope language and the (k)(1) sources confirm the "unambiguous" meaning of the orders' scope, which excludes two-ply panels imported from China to Vietnam.

The Commerce Department properly found that a particular market situation did not exist in South Korea affecting inputs for oil country tubular goods from South Korea, the Court of International Trade ruled in a case on an antidumping review on Korean OCTG. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said the agency legally found that hot-rolled coil imports from China and South Korea's electricity market did not constitute a PMS.

The Commerce Department must reconsider its explanation that all costs stemming from a merger are for expanding normal business operations and thus not extraordinary, the Court of International Trade ruled April 20. Judge Gary Katzmann said Commerce laid out this explanation "without citing to agency practice or court precedent, or any accounting principles supporting its position."

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act does not apply to criminal cases, the Supreme Court of the U.S. held in an April 17 opinion, opening Turkish state-owned Halkbank up to criminal prosecution for conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the author of the opinion, said the text of the FSIA, which the bank claimed protected it from prosecution, clearly shows it only addresses civil suits. Six of the court's justices sided with Kavanaugh, with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissenting (Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. U.S., Sup. Ct. # 21-1450).

Importer SXP Schulz Xtruded Products needed a protest to properly challenge CBP's failure to apply a Section 232 duty exclusion on four entries of its steel forged and turned bars, the Court of International Trade ruled. Dismissing the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves held that SXP could have filed for an extension of liquidation while it was waiting for the Commerce Department to correct the erroneous exclusion it issued or simply have filed a protest, which would have queued up jurisdiction under Section 1581(a).

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