The Court of International Trade in a July 25 order dismissed an antidumping suit brought by exporter Okechamp for failure to file a complaint within the time allotted. Okechamp brought the case to contest the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on preserved mushrooms from the Netherlands. The trade court said the case was tossed for lack or prosectuion (Okechamp v. United States, CIT # 23-00134).
The Commerce Department said that, after reviewing the facts, ship building company Nur Gemicilik ve Tic., an affiliate of countervailing duty respondent Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret, is not a cross-owned input supplier of goods primarily dedicated to the production of downstream products. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on July 24, Commerce changed its tune regarding why the input in question, steel scrap, was mainly dedicated to the production of downstream steel goods as part of the 2018 CVD review on steel concrete rebar from Turkey (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 21-00565).
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's defense of its decisions to impose lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs "makes a mockery of a detailed law in which Congress circumscribed what USTR may do and on what basis," four administrative and trade law professors said in an amicus brief. Filing at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit July 24, the professors said USTR did not have the statutory authority to impose the retaliatory duties on $320 billion worth of Chinese goods because the statute did not allow retaliation to serve as the basis for the duties, nor did it allow the drastically larger price tag (HMTX Industries, et al. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1891).
Michael Bowen, former international trade attorney at Crowell & Moring, has joined Canadian Solar (USA) as senior counsel in trade compliance, Bowen confirmed to Trade Law Daily. He joined Crowell in 2021 after working at the Commerce Department for four years as an international trade analyst. Bowen said that he is "thrilled to join Canadian Solar's mission to foster sustainable development and to create a better and cleaner earth for future generations."
No lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade.
The Commerce Department illegally picked Germany as the third-country comparison market in the antidumping duty investigation on preserved mushrooms from the Netherlands, U.S. mushroom producer Giorgio Foods argued in a July 21 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Giorgio, the AD petitioner, said that none of the reasons Commerce gave for picking Germany was supported by substantial evidence, leading, in part, to a de minimis rate for respondent Prochamp and the company's exclusion from the AD order (Giorgio Foods v. U.S., CIT # 23-00133).
The Court of International Trade in a July 24 opinion granted the Commerce Department's voluntary remand request to address alleged errors in calculating the antidumping margin as part of the investigation on forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany. Judge Stephen Vaden also sent the case back after finding that Commerce did not express a clear rationale for its refusal to address petitioner Ellwood City Forge Co.'s claims on alternate legal grounds Commerce could have used to make a particular market situation adjustment.
The Court of International Trade on July 21 upheld surrogate value picks for five inputs in an antidumping duty administrative review on activated carbon from China. The five inputs are carbonized material, coal tar, hydrochloric acid, steam and bituminous coal.
Importer PrimeSource Building Products moved for a partial stay of the Court of International Trade's order dismissing its suit challenging President Donald Trump's expansion of Section 232 steel and aluminum duties onto "derivative" products. PrimeSource said it wants the order stayed pending the resolution of its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (Primesource Building Products v. U.S., CIT # 20-00032).
The Federal Reserve Board on July 19 fined Deutsche Bank, its New York branch and other U.S. affiliates $186 million for violating two consent orders with the bank dealing with sanctions compliance and anti-money laundering controls. The board said Deutsche Bank "made insufficient remedial progress" under the two orders and had insufficient "anti-money laundering internal controls and governance processes" stemming from its past relationship with the bank's Estonian branch.