Solar panel mounts made by China Custom Manufacturing do not qualify for the "finished merchandise" exclusion from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a March 2 opinion. Upholding the Court of International Trade, judges Pauline Newman, Raymond Chen and Tiffany Cunningham said the matter is "governed squarely" by the appellate court's ruling in Shenyang Yuanda Aluminum Indus. Eng'g Co. v. U.S., which said a "part or subassembly ... cannot be a finished product."

The Court of International Trade should deny a motion for a preliminary injunction by two plaintiff-intervenors because granting that injunction would expand the case beyond its original issues in violation of Supreme Court rulings, DOJ argued in its Feb. 28 response at the Court of International Trade. By requesting an injunction that covers entries not initially subject to the proceeding filed by Jilin Bright, plaintiff-intervenors seek to expand the issues covered by the proceeding, DOJ argued (Jilin Bright Future Chemicals Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00336).

The Commerce Department failed in its obligation to calculate an accurate rate for a Kazakh exporter in a countervailing duty investigation when it unjustifiably rejected the exporter's questionnaire response, despite the response being only two hours late, the exporter, Tau-Ken Temir, said in the opening brief of its appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Tau-Ken Temir v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2204).

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 Court of International Trade in a Feb. 27 decision denied importer Crown Cork & Seal USA's bid to dismiss fraud and gross negligence claims in a customs penalty case. Judge M. Miller Baker ruled that, contrary to Crown Cork's characterization, the fraud claim is sufficiently specific and both claims clear the notice requirements of Rule 8 as set in the Bell Atlantic v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal cases.

The Court of International Trade rejected the Commerce Department's imposition of a total adverse facts available rate of 154.33% on antidumping duty respondent Oman Fasteners as the result of one 16-minutes-late submission, in a Feb. 15 opinion made public Feb. 27. Judge M. Miller Baker said the lawsuit was "not a close case," blasting Commerce's inadequate explanation for why one late submission due to a filing difficulty was enough to conclude that Oman Fasteners failed to cooperate to the best of its ability or why the company deserved the punitive rate.

The Court of International Trade on Feb. 27 ruled in favor of an importer on the Philippine origin of one of its models of power supplies and surge protectors, but found the importer didn’t prove a substantial transformation occurred for five others and upheld CBP’s finding of Chinese origin for those models.

The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's interpretation of the Major Inputs Rule to allow for the use of third-country surrogate data as "information available" for determining the cost of production of a major input a respondent bought from an affiliated non-market economy-based supplier.

The Commerce Department adequately addressed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's concerns over its use of the Cohen's d test as part of its differential pricing analysis to root out "masked" dumping, the Court of International Trade held in a Feb. 24 opinion sustaining use of the test in an antidumping duty investigation.

The Court of International Trade doesn't have jurisdiction to hear plaintiff-appellant Amsted Rail Co.'s attorney conflict of interest case because it should have instead been filed as a challenge to the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations, and in any case ARC doesn't prove a conflict of interest existed from the participation of its former counsel in the investigations, the ITC and defendant-intervenor Coalition of Freight Rail Producers argued in a pair of reply briefs filed Feb. 22 at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Amsted Rail Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1355).