During the week of June 24-30, the Food and Drug Administration modified the following existing Import Alert (not otherwise listed on the FDA's new and revised import alerts page) on the detention without physical examination and/or surveillance of:
The Food and Drug Administration is refusing imports of pomegranate seeds from Turkish company Goknur Gida Maddeleri Ithalat Ihracat Tic (aka Goknur Foodstuffs Import Export Trading), after connecting the product to a multistate outbreak of hepatitis A that infected 56 people in seven states. The joint investigation by FDA and the Centers for Disease Control found the a single shipment of seeds was the common ingredient in Townsend Farms and Harris Teeter Organic Antioxidant Blends that were recalled in June, it said.
On July 1, the Foreign Agricultural Service posted the following GAIN reports:
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes July 1 to Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) electronic manuals. While some changes are minor, other changes may affect the admissibility of the plant products, including fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
The Foreign Trade Zones Board issued the following notices for July 2:
DTrade2 and MARY will be down for maintenance between 12:00 p.m. July 3 and the morning of July 8 while they're upgraded, the State Department said. The maintenance window “will support integration with USXports for some license adjudication functions. DTrade2 will be unavailable during the period for case submission, and no case adjudication will occur. Questions should be directed to the DTRADE Help Desk at (202) 663-2838 or via email at dtradehelpdesk@state.gov.
The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls issued two name or address change notifications June 28:
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a challenge to the allocation of 2006 U.S.-Canada Softwood Lumber Agreement funds. The agreement ended a countervailing duty order on softwood lumber from Canada by, in part, requiring Canada to distribute $500 million to the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports (CFLI). A group of non-CFLI domestic producers said compensating CFLI to the exclusion of other domestic producers is discriminatory, contrary to the underlying law, and improperly delegates distribution authority to the CFLI for funds that should have been distributed by the government. The Court of International Trade dismissed in April 2012 (see 12042048), and CAFC found the lower court was correct July 1. The distribution scheme had a rational basis for discriminating because it was meant to solve a trade dispute the CFLI was heavily involved in, CAFC said. And the underlying law was so broad as to give USTR the discretion to agree to distribution to CFLI. USTR didn’t delegate authority to CFLI to distribute the funds either, because it agreed to the distribution method, CAFC said.
A listing of recent antidumping and countervailing duty messages from the Commerce Department posted to CBP's website July 1, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. The messages are available by searching for the listed CBP message number at addcvd.cbp.gov. (CBP occasionally adds backdated messages without otherwise indicating which message was added. ITT will include a message date in parentheses in such cases.)
President Obama published Proclamation 8997 and its related annexes in the Federal Register July 2, making changes to the Generalized System of Preferences program, including suspension of eligibility for Bangladesh, as well as other minor changes to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Revocation for Bangladesh is effective Sept. 3. All other changes to the HTS, which include GSP changes from the U.S. Trade Representative’s 2012 annual review, as well as amendments to tariff provisions in Chapter 85 and a technical change to Chapter 99, are effective July 1.