The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 21 opinion denied U.S. Steel Corp.'s motion to intervene in a case brought by Seneca Foods Corp. on the Commerce Department's denial of Section 232 exclusion requests. The trade court cited the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's decision in California Steel Industries v. U.S., in which the appellate court denied U.S. Steel the right to intervene in a different Section 232 exclusion denial challenge. Judge Gary Katzmann ruled that this precedent establishes that the steel maker doesn't have the right to intervene under the trade court's rules.
Congress explicitly gave district courts jurisdiction over the intended U.S. prosecution of a sovereign-owned bank for evading U.S. sanctions, the government argued in a brief vying for jurisdiction for the case at the Supreme Court. The U.S. said that nothing in the common law or the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act prevents Turkish state-owned bank Halkbank "from facing criminal consequences for violating U.S. law." Allowing the "novel claim of immunity" to thwart the criminal prosecution of the bank "would be unprecedented" and is unsupported by the FSIA, since its "text, structure, and history demonstrate that it does not apply to criminal cases," the brief said.
The Court of International Trade should dismiss a case from importer Southern Cross Seafood involving the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) for lack of jurisdiction, the U.S. argued in a Dec. 19 motion. Measures involving the CCAMLR belong exclusively at district courts and the statute "could not be more clear," the brief said. The case challenges the National Marine Fisheries Service's decision to deny Southern Cross' application for preapproval to import Chilean sea bass (Southern Cross Seafoods v. United States, CIT # 22-00299).
The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 20 opinion denied an injunction bid pending appeal from certain plaintiffs in an attorney conflict-of interest suit. After recently rejecting the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, Judge Gary Katzmann this time rejected the injunction motion pending appeal since the appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit "has not yet been noticed," but even if it had, the injunction "is unwarranted." Katzmann said that the plaintiffs fail to both show a "strong showing of success on the merits" and prove that they will suffer irreparable harm without the injunction.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade in a pair of Dec. 16 opinions upheld the Commerce Department's decisions on remand to exclude importers Worldwide Door Components' and Columbia Aluminum Products' door thresholds from the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China. After previously remanding the decision for not being submitted in a form that was judicially reviewable, Judge Timothy Stanceu said that this time around the agency has made a scope decision "in a form the court is able to sustain."
The Court of International Trade on Dec. 19 ruled that the Commerce Department improperly excluded certain solar cell sales from consolidated antidumping duty respondent Inventec Solar Energy Corp.'s (ISEC's) dumping margin based on its finding that ISEC did not have any actual or constructive knowledge that its goods would ultimately end up in the United States. Judge Leo Gordon said that given "the totality of the record, the court cannot sustain as reasonable" the finding that ISEC did not have actual knowledge of the solar cells' destination.
CBP improperly found that importer Diamond Tools Technology made a "material and false" statement in the agency's Enforce and Protect Act evasion finding, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Dec. 16 opinion. Sending the case back to CBP again, Judge Timothy Reif ruled that the agency's use of the EAPA statute is inconsistent with the law's language and structure, and even if its use was legal, its interpretation of the statute is not entitled to deference. Diamond Tools properly classified its merchandise as not covered merchandise given the guidance it had at the time, the judge said.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department stuck by its decision to rely on antidumping duty respondent Dillinger's books and records to find the cost of production (COP) for non-prime products, the agency said in Dec. 15 remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade. Commerce said that relying on Dillinger's books and records, or the recorded total costs assigned to the prime and non-prime goods, was the "only reasonable approach" (AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke v. United States, CIT #17-00158).