President Joe Biden on Aug. 30 announced four new nominations to federal district courts as part of his seventh round of judicial nominations. Colleen Holland, special counsel to Judge Elizabeth Wolford at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, was nominated to the same New York court. Judge John Kazen, current magistrate judge for the Southern District of Texas, was nominated to the same Texas court. Micah Smith, assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Hawaii, was nominated for the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii. Ramona Manglona, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, was nominated for the same court.
Importer Cambridge Isotope Laboratories told the Court of International Trade in an Aug. 30 letter as part of its customs suit that it filed a request for a changed circumstances review with the Commerce Department. In the customs case, Cambridge Isotopes said an enriched ammonium sulfate isotope was incorrectly placed within the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on ammonium sulfate from China (see 2304280022). The changed circumstances review concerns the enriched 15N ammonium sulfate isotope (Cambridge Isotope Laboratories v. United States, CIT # 23-00080).
The Organization of Professional Aviculturists and the Lineolated Parakeet Society told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that the Fish and Wildlife Service illegally rejected their petitions to add two avian species to the list of birds that can be imported to the U.S. The avian advocacy groups argued that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida erroneously dismissed their case by ruling that the plain language of the Wild Exotic Bird Conservation Act does not require species to be listed by the specific countries of origin from which they can be imported (Organization of Professional Aviculturists v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 11th Cir. # 23-11984).
A recent legal case in the EU helped clear up how the European Commission considers the factors it points to when identifying if a company has evaded antidumping duties, said Simran Sethi, senior manager at OCR Global Trade Management Software Solutions, during an Aug. 30 webinar. Speaking to the importance of import compliance in light of recent judicial developments in the U.S. and abroad, Sethi laid out the four criteria the commission considers when making its evasion findings.
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. backed the Commerce Department's valuation of exporter Jilin Bright Future Chemical's inputs of bituminous coal and coal tar as part of the 2020-21 review of the antidumping duty order on activated carbon from China. Filing its response to Jilin Bright's claims (see 2306080054) at the Court of International Trade, the government argued that the exporter failed to dispute Commerce's formula for converting useful heat value (UHV) to gross calorific value (GCV) as part of the BT coal valuation at the administrative level. As a result, Jilin Bright did not exhaust its administrative remedies, the brief said (Jilin Bright Future Chemicals Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00336).
Exporter Tau-Ken Temir waived its arguments against the Commerce Department's decision to grant the company's first two extension requests in part and reject the third request, the U.S. argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The government said that because TKT did not raise the issues either at Commerce or at the Court of International Trade in its case on the countervailing duty investigation on silicon metal from Kazakhstan, the appellate court need not address the claims (Tau-Ken Temir v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2204).
Consumer goods conglomerate 3M agreed to pay over $6.5 million to settle charges it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act's internal controls provisions, the SEC announced Aug. 25. 3M's China-based subsidiary allegedly arranged for Chinese government employees of state-owned healthcare facilities to travel to international conferences, educational events and healthcare facility visits as part of the subsidiary's "marketing and outreach efforts."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in an Aug. 28 order allowed the Canadian government and eight Canadian exporters to file an amicus brief in a case on the Commerce Department's use of the Cohen's d test as part of its analysis to root out "masked" dumping. The Canadian government and companies asked for leave to file the brief earlier this month in the case in which the appellate court originally questioned the use of the test, arguing that Commerce is not using the statistical tool "in any coherent sense" (see 2308020027). The brief objected to the agency's defense of the test, which said that it can use the tool despite not satisfying base statistical assumptions since it is using the whole population of data instead of a sample (Stupp Corp. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1663).
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida was wrong to deny refrigerant importer BMP International's motion to compel arbitration in a case brought by Chinese company T.T. International Co. (TTI) for unpaid invoices, BMP argued in its opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The district court had said that the motion for arbitration was waived by BMP, along with joint venture iGas USA, after the companies failed to raise the issue in an earlier case involving TTI and BMP (T.T. International Co. v. BMP International, 11th Cir. # 23-11978).