The Court of International Trade in a July 31 order granted a motion from antidumping duty petitioners led by ArcelorMittal Tubular Products seeking to file its response to the court's questions for oral argument out of time. Judge Gary Katzmann granted the request despite exporter Goodluck India's motion to clarify whether the company had to respond to the submission, seeing as the petitioners filed their response nearly an hour late without filing a request to file it out of time (Goodluck India v. United States, CIT # 22-00024).
The Court of International Trade in a July 28 order upheld CBP's finding on remand that importer Diamond Tools Technology did not evade the antidumping duty order on diamond sawblades from China. The evasion finding applies to DTT's imports of diamond sawblades assembled in Thailand but made with Chinese cores and segments before Dec. 1, 2017.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's recent ruling in Royal Brush Manufacturing v. U.S., which found that CBP violated importer Royal Brush's due process rights by not giving it access to business confidential information in an antidumping and countervailing duty evasion proceeding, "may have broader implications," including on forced labor issues, customs lawyer Lawrence Friedman said in a July 28 blog post. If the decision "applies generally, it may require that" CBP make its record fully available, including BCI, which would be an "interesting unintended consequence" of this Enforce and Protect Act case, Friedman said.
The Dominican Republic violated its World Trade Organization commitments under the Anti-Dumping Agreement when imposing duties on corrugated steel bars from Costa Rica, a World Trade Organization dispute panel said in a July 27 report. The panel said the Dominican Republic's Regulatory Commission on Unfair Trade Practices and Safeguard Measures "failed to comply with the requirement" to make the comparison between the export price and normal value with sales made at "nearly as possible the same time."
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available on countervailing duty respondent Risen Energy Co. for the Chinese government's failure to cooperate regarding the Export Buyer's Credit Program "fails to properly understand the Court precedent on this matter," Risen argued. Submitting a reply brief on July 26 at the Court of International Trade, the exporter said that while the U.S. "may be correct" that using AFA on a cooperative respondent due to the Chinese government's failure to cooperate may be legal, the court has cautioned Commerce "to mitigate the impact on the cooperating party" (Risen Energy Co. v. U.S. CIT # 22-00231).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in a July opinion, reversed a California district court's decision acquitting Yi-Chi Shih, an employee at China-based firm Chengdu RML, of conspiracy to violate export control laws via his export of semiconductors to China. Judges Andrew Hurwitz and Ryan Nelson said "a rational factfinder could find that the exported [monolithic microwave integrated circuits] were not exempt from the [Export Administration Regulations] as fundamental research."
The Commerce Department improperly refused to accept relevant factual information submitted by importer Shelter Forest International Acquisition showing that its hardwood plywood was actually made in Vietnam and not China, Shelter Forest said in a complaint at the Court of International Trade. The importer said that its submissions show that its products imported from Vietnamese producer Lechenwood were made of hardwood plywood with a core made in Vietnam, thus excluding the goods from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood from China per Commerce's own definition (Shelter Forest International Acquisition v. United States, CIT # 23-00144).
President Joe Biden's two nominees to fill vacancies at the Court of International Trade, Schagrin Associates' Joseph Laroski and the Commerce Department's Lisa Wang (see 2307120021), went before the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing on July 26. The two nominees faced questioning from the senators, including inquiries into their backgrounds and how their past experiences will shape their decision-making on the bench.
Importer PrimeSource Building Products on July 26 asked the Supreme Court to take up its case contesting President Donald Trump's expansion of Section 232 steel and aluminum duties onto "derivative" products, urging the High Court to settle ambiguity in statutes delegating "vast legislative power to the Executive in favor of restraining the delegation" (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., Sup. Ct. # 23-69).