The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Exporter Midwest-CBK will appeal a May 2022 Court of International Trade decision, which said that sales from a Canadian warehouse to U.S. customers are sales "for exportation to the United States" instead of "domestic sales." After losing on this claim last year, the case shifted to an inquiry into the value of the goods. Midwest-CBK said that, due to its business model, it couldn't litigate this issue, and so it made the decision to ditch this claim so it could appeal its original argument (see 2310200054). Per its Nov. 8 notice of appeal, the exporter will take its suit to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Midwest-CBK v. United States, CIT # 17-00154).
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas temporarily halted administrative proceedings concerning SpaceX's export control-related hiring practices, in a Nov. 8 order. Granting the space exploration company's motion for a preliminary injunction in part and denying it in part, Judge Rolando Olvera said SpaceX is likely to succeed on its claim that a law making it illegal to discriminate based on citizenship status in hiring decisions, 8 U.S.C. 1324b, violates the Appointments Clause under the U.S. Constitution (Space Exploration Technologies v. Carol Bell, S.D. Tex. # 23-00137).
Italian pasta exporters La Molisana and Valdigrano di Flavio Pagani failed in their attempt to provide compelling reasons for the Commerce Department to do away with "longstanding, transparent, and consistent instructions for reporting protein content," the U.S. said in a Nov. 9 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (La Molisana v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2060).
The Court of International Trade on Nov. 8 upheld a Commerce Department scope ruling that importer Valeo North America's T-series aluminum sheet is covered by the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on common alloy aluminum sheet from China. Judge Mark Barnett sustained Commerce's consideration of and weight applied to various industry evidence along with its detailed discussion of heat treatment.
The European Council reappointed two judges and an advocate-general for terms running Oct. 7, 2024, to Oct. 6, 2030. Constantinos Lycourgos and Jan Passer were reappointed judges and Giovanni Pitruzzella advocate-general as part of the "partial renewal of the composition of the Court of Justice in 2024," the council said.
Countervailing duty petitioners' opposition to exporter Tau-Ken Temri's (TKT's) bid to expand its word count for its reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit falls flat, the exporter, along with the Kazakh Ministry of Trade and Integration, argued in a Nov. 6 brief to the appellate court. TKT said that it needs the extra words to respond to briefs from both the U.S. and petitioners Globe Specialty Metals and Mississippi Silicon because, contrary to Globe's suggestion, the briefs don't make identical arguments (Tau-Ken Temir v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2204).
The Commerce Department's cross-owned input supplier analysis in a case on the 2018 countervailing duty review of steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey "has a direct and precedential bearing" on the Court of International Trade's decision in the case on the 2020 review of the same order, exporter Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret told the trade court (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 22-00149).
The Court of International Trade on Nov. 7 dismissed an antidumping duty case from lumber importer West Fraser Mills for failure to file a complaint by the time limits set in court rules. West Fraser was challenging the Commerce Department's 2021 review of the antidumping duty order on softwood lumber products from Canada (West Fraser Mills v. U.S., CIT # 23-00209).
The Commerce Department erroneously used Malaysian tariff schedule subheading 4402.90.1000 as the surrogate value for coal-based carbonized materials in an antidumping review of activated carbon instead of the broader Harmonized System subheading 4402.90, exporters Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. and Carbon Activated Corp. argued. Filing their opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the exporters said Commerce's decision was based on "inaccurate and unsupported factual findings" (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-2135).