DOJ rolled out indictments on June 23 against four China-based chemical manufacturing companies and eight employees and executives at these companies for knowingly making, selling and distributing precursor chemicals for fentanyl proliferation in the U.S. Filing three cases at two New York district courts, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the suits stand as an effort to target "every step of the movement, manufacturing, and sale of fentanyl -- from start to finish." The cases mark the first time a Chinese company or individual has been charged for trafficking fentanyl precursor chemicals.
The Court of International Trade on June 23 upheld the Commerce Department's decision not to collapse exporter Prosperity Tieh Enterprise Co. with the already-collapsed entity of Yieh Phui Enterprise Co. and Synn Industrial Co. as part of the antidumping duty investigation on corrosion-resistant steel products from Taiwan.
No lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade.
Importer Nature's Touch Frozen Foods (West) will appeal a May Court of International Trade decision concerning the classification of 14 types of frozen fruit mixtures. According to the June 23 notice of appeal, Nature's Touch will take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In the suit, Judge Stephen Vaden said all of the mixture types, five of which contain vegetable ingredients, should be set under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 0811.90.80 as "other" frozen fruits, dutiable at 14.5% (see 2305260048) (Nature's Touch Frozen Foods (West) v. United States, CIT # 20-00131).
The Court of International Trade in a June 23 order denied antidumping duty petitioners' bid for an oral argument in a suit on whether to collapse mandatory respondents Yieh Phui Enterprise Co. and Synn Industrial Co. with one of their affiliates, Prosperity Tieh Enterprise Co. Judge Timothy Stanceu rejected the oral argument request following opposition from Prosperity and Yieh Phui, finding that "oral argument would not assist in the resolution of the issues remaining in this litigation" (Prosperity Tieh Enterprise Co. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 16-00138).
Trade Court Upholds Use of Likely Selling Price to Value COP of Non-Prime Goods in CTL Plate AD Case
The Court of International Trade on June 23 upheld the Commerce Department's use of exporter Dillinger Huttenwerke's likely selling price, taken from its books, to value the cost of production of its non-prime merchandise in an antidumping investigation. Judge Leo Gordon said the company's failure to fill the record with actual COP data for the non-prime products in the AD case on steel cut-to-length plate from Germany justified the agency's decision to use the likely selling price as a fill-in.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a June 22 order denied a bid for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc in the suit on President Donald Trump's expansion of Section 232 steel and aluminum duties onto derivative products. Judges Kimberly Moore, Pauline Newman, Alan Lourie, Timothy Dyk, Sharon Prost, Jimmie Reyna, Richard Taranto, Raymond Chen, Todd Hughes, Kara Stoll and Leonard Stark made the decision denying the petitioners, ruling that the mandate will be issued June 29 (PrimeSource Building Products v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 21-2066).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on June 22 issued its mandate in a case on the 2017-18 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on activated carbon from China. The Federal Circuit said the Commerce Department properly valued an input of activated carbon using data from a country different from the primary surrogate nation (see 2305010028). The court said the agency's departure from its normal practice of preferring to take all the data from the primary surrogate country does not mean its decision was unsupported by substantial evidence (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-1298).
The Commerce Department didn't violate the law by accepting information submitted by antidumping duty respondent Zhejiang Dingli Machinery Co. even though the data was labeled as business proprietary, the government said in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. In the AD investigation on mobile access equipment and subassemblies from China, the U.S. said the information could only have been submitted as business proprietary information, and that the data was merely "supporting documentation for information already on the record" (Coalition of American Manufacturers of Mobile Access Equipment v. U.S., CIT # 22-00152).