The Court of International Trade on June 14 dismissed a suit from three conservation groups seeking to compel the Interior Department to decide whether Mexico is engaging in illegal trade and fishing of the totoaba fish, which threatens the endangered vaquita porpoise. The parties reached a settlement in April under which the agency found that Mexican nationals are violating the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (see 2306020054). Due to this finding, the U.S. could impose an embargo on any goods coming from Mexico.
The Court of International Trade on June 14 granted importer Maple Leaf Marketing's bid to redesignate the U.S.'s counterclaim as a defense in a customs spat on the classification of boronized steel tubing. Dismissing Maple Leaf's bid to dismiss as moot, Judge Claire Kelly cited the court's Cyber Power Systems (USA) v. U.S. decision to find that nowhere in Congress' scheme on the classification of goods does the legislative body explicitly let the U.S. "assert a counterclaim challenging CBP's classification."
The Court of International Trade ordered that the parties in an antidumping duty case show cause that the court not remand the Commerce Department's decision to grant a constructed export price offset to the mandatory respondents in the 2019-20 administrative review on circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea. Judge Timothy Reif said "it appears there may be interest" in a remand in light of Commerce's obligations under 19 U.S.C. Section 1677m(d) to promptly inform a respondent to a request for information of the nature of any deficiency in the response and give that respondent a chance to remedy the deficiency (Wheatland Tube v. United States, CIT # 22-00160).
Importer Greentech Energy Solutions is challenging CBP's decision to assess antidumping and countervailing duties on its 2019 imports of solar modules from Vietnam, despite no finding of dumping, subsidization or injury for Vietnam, nor even the existence of an an anti-circumvention inquiry at that time, Greentech said in a June 9 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Greentech Energy Solutions v. United States, CIT # 23-00118).
There is no requirement that an importer intentionally evade duties to be hit by an Enforce and Protect Act investigation, the Court of International Trade ruled in a June 13 opinion. Upholding CBP's finding that importers Ikadan System USA and Weihai Gaosai Metal Product Co. evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on steel grating from China, Judge Leo Gordon rejected the importers' claim that the definition of "evasion" requires a finding of some level of culpability.
The World Trade Organization is steadily headed towards irrelevancy to global trade and is facing a "long, slow sunset," said Peter Harrell, former senior director for international economics and competitiveness at the White House, during remarks at the Georgetown International Trade Update on June 13.
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. has yet to appear in a case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on the 2019-20 antidumping duty administrative review on aluminum wire and cable from China brought by importer Repwire and exporter Jin Tiong Electrical Materials Manufacturer. The appeal concerns a Court of International Trade decision upholding the Commerce Department's withdrawal of a separate-rate questionnaire it erroneously issued to Jin Tiong (see 2303200039). In a text-only notice to the U.S., the Federal Circuit said that the government has failed to file an entry of appearance, which could lead to dismissal "or other action as deemed appropriate by the court" (Repwire v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1933).
The Court of International Trade June 9 upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in a suit on the administrative review of the antidumping duty order covering multilayered wood flooring from China. Judge Richard Eaton sustained the AD review after exporter Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. signed off on Commerce's redetermination dropping the company's dumping rate to zero. On remand, the agency dropped the presumption the Chinese government controlled Jilin Forest after Eaton questioned whether Commerce could disregard a mandatory respondent's own data in favor of the countrywide nonmarket economy rate (see 2305040061). Jilin Forest counsel Lizbeth Levinson of Fox Rothschild previously told Trade Law Daily an appeal is unlikely, given that it opens up further scrutiny of the agency's NME policy in AD reviews (Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring v. U.S., CIT # 18-00191).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied customs broker license exam test taker Byungmin Chae's combined petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc of the appellate court's opinion landing him just one question short of passing the exam taken in April 2018. The court said Chae's petition was referred to the panel that heard the case, comprising Judges Pauline Newman, Sharon Prost and Kimberly Hughes, and was then circulated to all the judges in regular active service. A month prior, the court rejected duplicates of Chae's petition seemingly filed in error.