Attorney Jon Yormick took 29 cases with him when he moved from Flannery Georgalis to create his own firm, Yormick Law LLC, his office confirmed with Trade Law Daily. Yormick began the process of filing notices of attorney substitutions in the cases, all of which are attached to the massive Section 301 litigation. The 29 cases involve 36 total companies that migrated with Yormick. The firm was founded on Jan. 1 as a relaunch of Yormick's small firm practice, last referred to as Law Offices of Jon P. Yormick Co., which existed from 1995-2019.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should disregard the government's procedural arguments in a case on whether Vandewater International's steel branch outlets fall within the scope of the antidumping duty order on butt-weld pipe fittings from China, importer Smith-Cooper International (SCI) argued in a reply brief (Vandewater International v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1093).
Three conservation groups moved to dismiss their suit at the Court of International Trade seeking to compel the Interior Department to decide whether Mexico is engaging in illegal trade and fishing of endangered wildlife. The groups ditched the suit after Interior determined Mexican nationals are violating the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which could lead to a ban on imports of Mexican wildlife (Center for Biological Diversity, et al. v. United States, CIT # 22-00339).
The judicial and administrative decisions cited by U.S. and antidumping petitioner Mid Continent Steel & Wire to defend the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available against exporter Unicatch Industrial Co. do not apply to Unicatch's court challenge, Unicatch said in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Commerce relied on AFA against Unicatch for failing to submit a complete cost reconciliation in the form requested by the agency, hitting the exporter with a 78.17% dumping rate (Pro-Team Coil Nail Enterprise v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2241).
Solar cell exporters JA Solar Technology Yangzhou Co., Shanghai JA Solar Technology Co. and JingAo Solar Co. objected to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's order saying that it will reform the caption to designate the companies as appellees. JA Solar instead asked to remain a plaintiff since it supports appellant Risen Energy even though it did not itself file a notice of appeal. "Second, JA Solar will not be filing or joining any brief in this proceeding, nor does it intend to participate in oral argument," the brief said. The suit is challenging the Commerce Department's surrogate values for silver paste and use partial neutral facts available in the 2017-18 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on solar cells from China (see 2301050026) (Risen Energy Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1550).
The Court of International Trade's recent decision on the customs classification of frozen fruit mixtures supports the government's arguments in a customs spat on importer Second Nature Design's imports of dried botanical items used in home decor, the U.S. said in a notice of supplemental authority. Acknowledging that the trade court's recent opinion in Nature's Touch Frozen Foods v. U.S. is not final, the government nevertheless said that Judge Stephen Vaden's opinion backs its case (Second Nature Designs v. United States, CIT # 17-00271).
Antidumping petitioner Nucor Tubular Products' motion to dismiss a suit on an AD review of steel pipes and tubes from South Korea fails to consider all of exporter HiSteel's claims, the exporter argued in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade. While Nucor claims a Commerce Department reversal of its adjustments to HiSteel's costs and scrap offset as a result of the transactions disregarded rule will not change the company's margin, HiSteel said the true effect on its margin is unknown given its remaining claim against Commerce's differential pricing analysis (DPA) (HiSteel v. U.S., CIT # 22-00142).
The Commerce Department asked the Court of International Trade for a voluntary remand in a countervailing duty case to reconsider its use of an adverse inference against exporter JA Solar Technology Yangzhou Co. related to its alleged use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program since the agency "refined its practice." In its opposition to JA Solar's and Risen Energy Co.'s motion for judgment in a case on an administrative review on solar cells from China, the U.S. said it altered its handling of verifying non-use of the EBCP to only require non-use certifications from all U.S. importers and not all downstream U.S. customers (Risen Energy Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00231).
The Commerce Department decided to use adverse facts available related to antidumping duty respondent Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret's billing adjustments following a Court of International Trade order questioning whether Assan acted to the best of its ability in its remand results submitted to the trade court May 31. The agency also revised the duty drawback adjustment methodology it applied to Assan by dividing the amount of duties exempted by a Turkish duty exemption program during the AD investigation period over the total quantity of exports made under the program to calculate a per-unit drawback adjustment. The result, if sustained, would be a de minimis rate for Assan (Assan Aluminyum Sanayi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 21-00246).
The Commerce Department didn't adequately explain its decision to include four types of income categories when calculating the financial ratios for surrogate company Ayes Celikhasir in the antidumping duty investigation on metal lockers from China, the Court of International Trade ruled in a May 30 opinion. Petitioner and plaintiff List Industries said that if these income categories were excluded from the ratio calculation, Ayes would have been revealed not to be a profitable company, barring it from being used as a surrogate.