The Court of International Trade on Oct. 7 sent a customs classification dispute on truck steps to a bench trial after finding that the undisputed facts are insufficient for conducting a principal use analysis on whether the products are "side protective attachments." Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves held that while a Section 301 exclusion for "side protective attachments" is a principal use provision, and not a provision for an individual product, the court can't at this time properly assess the imports at issue under a principal use framework.

Parties in a lawsuit may compel opposing parties to produce publicly available information during discovery, the Court of International Trade ruled Oct. 4. In the ruling, which partly granted and partly denied pistol maker Glock’s motion to compel responses to its discovery request, Judge Jenifer Choe-Groves also criticized the government’s late responses, which she said suggested "carelessness and a lack of appropriate due diligence.” (Glock v. U.S., CIT # 23-00046).

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 2 denied exporter Chandan Steel Limited's motion for reconsideration of the court's order sustaining the exporter's 145.25% total adverse facts available rate in the 2018-19 review of the antidumping duty order on stainless steel flanges. Chandan said the trade court failed to address all of its arguments in its decision, including that Commerce should have limited its use of AFA solely to the individual U.S. sales for which information was missing. Judge Timothy Stanceu said that while Commerce had the authority to take that path, it wasn't required to by the statute and that the decision to use total AFA was justified.

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 2 sustained the Commerce Department's final scope ruling excluding engines with horizontal crankshafts from the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on vertical shaft engines between 99cc and up to 225cc from China. Commerce excluded the engines from the orders on remand from the trade court. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said the agency "complied with the Court's remand order" in excluding the engines.

The Court of International Trade on Sept. 18 sustained the Commerce Department's decision on remand to use a weighted average to set the antidumping rate for the non-individually examined respondents in the 2016-17 review of the AD order on multilayered wood flooring from China. The agency weight averaged the zero and adverse facts available rates given to the two mandatory respondents. Judge Richard Eaton said Commerce "followed the court's instructions on remand" by using a weighted average, which represents the "expected method" for determining the separate rate. The result was a 31.63% AD rate for the companies -- down from the original 42.57%.

The Court of International Trade on Sept. 17 remanded the Commerce Department's decision to use a quarterly cost methodology to analyze exporter Officine Tecnosider's sales in the 2020-21 review of the antidumping duty order on steel plate from Italy. Judge Stephen Vaden said the agency failed to grapple with various "shortcomings" in its decision, including Commerce's sole focus on Italian sales as a "reliable indicator of linkage for U.S. sales." Vaden also questioned why the agency didn't follow its precedent in analyzing products jointly sold in both the U.S. and home markets and found that Commerce didn't adequately explain how it analyzed the data to see if there was "proper linkage between the cost of manufacturing and the sales price."

The Court of International Trade on Sept. 9 rejected importer Katana Racing's renewed motion to dismiss the government's action against it to recover unpaid duties on passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China. In her first opinion since being confirmed to the court, Judge Lisa Wang held that the U.S. didn't fail to properly identify the person liable for the violation, didn't need to exhaust administrative remedies and didn't unreasonably delay in bringing the claim. The judge added that Katana's claim of government misconduct is better characterized as part of summary judgment. Wang also denied both the government's and Katana's motions for summary judgment, finding there to be genuine issues of material fact that can't be sorted on the current motions, particularly due to the lack of undisputed facts in the case.

The Court of International Trade on Sept. 5 held that a CBP HQ ruling on see-through pop-up tent "pods" wasn't subject to notice and comment requirements because a prior protest approval on the goods wasn't a "prior interpretive ruling or decision." Judge Timothy Reif said the protest approval wasn't the result of "considered deliberations" because CBP's Regulations and Rulings office wasn't involved, and that the decision didn't have "prospective effect" and wasn't "interpretive."

The Court of International Trade on Aug. 28 rejected the motions for judgment from both importer HyAxiom and the government on the proper classification of PC50 supermodules, which are a part of a stationary hydrogen fuel cell generator. Judge Timothy Stanceu said the court must first resolve whether the goods fit under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 8405, which cover gas or water gas generators and is the heading preferred by HyAxiom. The judge said the court must determine whether the PC50's "primary function" is as a gas or water gas generator -- something neither party has sufficiently answered. As a result, both parties' summary judgment motions were denied.

The Court of International Trade in an Aug. 15 decision made public Aug. 20 remanded the Commerce Department's 2021-22 review of the antidumping duty order on frozen warmwater shrimp from India. Judge Thomas Aquilino said Commerce failed to adequately respond to the petitioners' claim that some of exporter Megaa Moda's home market sales weren't made "for consumption" in India. However, the judge sustained Commerce's decision not to offset Megaa Moda's financial expenses by money earned from its "interest subvention program" and fixed deposits with Indian bank Federal Bank Limited.