During the week of March 11-17, the Food and Drug Administration modified the following existing Import Alerts (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 issued a lengthy list of corrections to clerical errors in its Jan. 16 proposed rules on produce safety and preventative controls in human food, respectively. The corrections address typos, incorrect references, and the numbering of sections and tables, among other things. Corrections to the produce safety proposal are available (here), and corrections to the preventative controls in human food proposal are available (here).
On March 18 the Foreign Agricultural Service issued the following GAIN reports:
Acting Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank will become chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in July, she said in an email sent to Commerce employees March 18. Blank said she "is not going anywhere in the near future" and said she looks forward to advancing the department's program and policy issues, in her email. Blank took over as acting secretary after John Bryson took a medical leave of absence last June following reports that he suffered a seizure related to three car accidents. President Barack Obama thanked Blank for her service in a statement Monday (here). Obama did not say who he would nominate as her replacement.
The Court of International Trade stayed yet another court proceeding involving zeroing, pending a ruling on the Union Steel case by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The stayed proceeding, Dongbu v. U.S., awaits a remand order from CIT on how to implement the appeals court’s 2011 ruling, which marked the first time a court asked the International Trade Administration for an explanation of its policy to use zeroing in administrative reviews but not investigations. At issue is the scope of the remand, as well as whether Dongbu can continue to participate in the proceeding, given that it didn’t participate in the appeal to CAFC. CIT declined to decide either issue, because the appeals court’s ruling in Union Steel could control the outcome of this case.
A listing of recent antidumping and countervailing duty messages from the International Trade Administration posted to CBP's website March 18, 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.)
The “first sale doctrine” applies to foreign-made goods, so copyrighted material legally manufactured and sold abroad may be imported and sold in the U.S. without the copyright holder’s permission, ruled the Supreme Court March 19. The 6-3 decision reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit’s ruling in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, where a Thai student studying in the U.S. was found to have infringed on the textbook company’s copyrights by selling cheaper Asian editions of Wiley’s textbooks in the U.S. without the company’s permission. The Supreme Court’s decision also settled splits between several circuits on whether the “first sale doctrine” applies to goods legally made and sold abroad.
Despite an earlier announcement to the contrary, the Fish and Wildlife Service said March 15 it will continue to perform overtime inspection services at ports. The agency had originally said March 11 that it was imposing a hiring freeze, and would no longer perform overtime inspections, in order to reduce expenditures to implement sequestration cuts (here). The FWS now says it will continue to perform overtime inspections of wildlife shipments, because they are funded by importers and exporters: “requests for overtime inspection services will be accommodated to the maximum extent possible in order to protect wildlife and reduce the burden on the trade.” FWS will cut staffing and reduce spending in other areas, it said. The agency’s hiring freeze remains in effect.
The International Trade Commission is publishing notices in the March 18 Federal Register on the following AD/CV injury, Section 337 patent, and other trade proceedings (any notices that warrant a more detailed summary will appear in another ITT article):
The International Trade Administration published notices in the March 18 Federal Register on the following AD/CV proceedings (any notices that announce changes to AD/CV duty rates, scope, affected firms, or effective dates will be detailed in another ITT article):