Exporter Teh Fong Min (TFM) International Co. filed a brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last week adopting the government's defense of its decision to revoke the antidumping duty orders on stilbenic optical brightening agents from China and Taiwan after no interested domestic party filed a notice of intent to participate in sunset reviews on the orders (Archroma U.S. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-2159).
Antidumping duty and countervailing duty petitioners the U.S. Aluminum Extruders Coalition and United Steelworkers argued that the International Trade Commission incorrectly concluded that aluminum extrusions from China, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam didn't injure the U.S. industry (U.S. Aluminum Extruders Coalition v. United States, CIT # 24-00209).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Dec. 23 stayed a Texas court's order enjoining the enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act's (CTA's) beneficial ownership information reporting requirements. Judges Carl Stewart, Catharina Haynes and Stephen Higginson said the government is likely to succeed in defending the CTA's constitutionality given that the act's reporting requirements squarely fall within over a century of the U.S. Supreme Court's jurisprudence regarding Congress' power under the commerce clause, the court said (Texas Top Cop Shop v. Merrick Garland, 5th Cir. # 24-40792).
Tire exporter Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations filed a 10-count complaint at the Court of International Trade on Dec. 23, challenging the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available against the company in the antidumping duty investigation on truck and bus tires from Thailand (Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations v. United States, CIT # 24-00263).
President-elect Donald Trump announced his plans to nominate Court of International Trade Judge Stephen Vaden to be deputy secretary of agriculture. Vaden joined the court in 2020 after working in Trump's first administration as USDA's general counsel. Posting the announcement on Truth Social, the president-elect said that at the agency, Vaden "relocated and reorganized the Agencies that comprise the Department to better serve Rural America, and engaged in substantial regulatory reform."
The U.S. charged three international drug traffickers last week with conspiracy to import fentanyl and methamphetamine precursor chemicals and importing a fentanyl precursor chemical, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced. The indictment brought charges against Xiang Gao, a Chinese national; Oleksandr Klochkov, a Ukrainian national; and Igors Kricfalusijs, a Latvian national.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Antidumping duty petitioner Coalition for Fair Trade in Shopping Bags and exporter Finieco Industria e Comercio de Embalagens dropped their lawsuits on the antidumping duty investigation on paper shopping bags from Portugal, filing a stipulation of dismissal on Dec. 23. The coalition argued that the Commerce Department failed to treat Finieco's fixed payments to sales employees as indirect selling expenses (see 2409120037) (Coalition for Fair Trade in Shopping Bags v. U.S., CIT # 24-00158) (Finieco Industria e Comercio de Embalagens v. U.S., CIT # 24-00160).
A suit on the 2020-22 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on common alloy aluminum sheet from Spain was reassigned on Dec. 19 from Judge Timothy Reif to Judge Mark Barnett. The suit was brought by exporter Compania Valenciana de Aluminio Baux and claims that the Commerce Department's self-developed "levels of trade" test doesn't comport with U.S. law, especially in light of the Supreme Court's decision eliminating deference to agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes (see 2412040058). Counsel for Compania Valenciana declined to comment on the change in judges (Compania Valenciana de Aluminio Baux, S.L.U. v. United States, CIT # 23-00259).
The Commerce Department erred in changing the date of sale for respondent Toyo Kohan Co.'s U.S. transactions in the 2022-23 review of the antidumping duty order on diffusion-annealed nickel-plated flat-rolled steel from Japan, the company said in a complaint at the Court of International Trade. The exporter said Commerce "did not justify" its change from using the date of invoice as the date of sale to using the shipment date from Japan as the date of sale (Toyo Kohan Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00261).