The U.S. cannot rely on the Commerce Department's post hoc rationalization of its decision to countervail glass subsidies in a countervailing duty review, plaintiff-appellants, led by Guangzhou Jangho Curtain Wall System Engineering Co., argued in a Dec. 5 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The appellants also said that the government did not take new agency action in making its determination, showing a "kind of bait and switch decision-making" decried in a key Supreme Court case (Taizhou United Imp. & Exp. Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. 22-2000).
The EU requested two World Trade Organization dispute settlement panels over trade disputes with China, the European Commission announced. One dispute concerns Chinese trade restrictions on Lithuanian exports and EU exports with Lithuanian content. The other deals with the legality of Beijing restricting EU high-tech patent holders from accessing EU courts. The WTO action comes after bilateral talks over the issues fell through, EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said.
The Commerce Department properly dropped its reliance on an Enforce and Protect Act case to reject third-country sales in an antidumping duty review, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Dec. 6 opinion. Judge Gary Katzmann upheld Commerce's remand results, which used respondent Z.A. Sea Food's (ZASF's) Vietnamese sales to calculate normal value in an AD review on Indian products. The domestic shrimp industry had argued Commerce should use constructed value because there is no evidence the shrimp sold in Vietnam was consumed by the Vietnamese customers. Katzmann waived the domestic industry's claims "due to the lack of adequate argument."
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade on Dec. 6 upheld the Commerce Department's finding of no particular market situation for hot-rolled coil steel in an antidumping duty review on welded line pipe from South Korea. Judge Claire Kelly also upheld Commerce's decision to recalculate respondent Nexteel's costs without making a non-prime product adjustment and revise the non-examined companies' rate. However, the judge again remanded the agency's further explanation of its classification of Nexteel's suspended production line costs.
DOJ briefs in the massive Section 301 litigation don't demonstrate that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative considered "major objections contemporaneously with its decisions" to impose the lists 3 and 4A tariffs, the plaintiffs argued in a Dec. 5 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. While USTR relies on presidential direction as the post hoc justification of its decisions, the court already ruled that out as a means of satisfying the Administrative Procedure Act, the brief said. To now satisfy the APA, the U.S. may take new action, but the lists 3 and 4A tariffs may not stay in place based on "conclusory and post hoc rationales," the plaintiffs said (In Re Section 301 Cases, CIT #21-00052).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department properly granted antidumping duty respondents a constructed export price offset in an AD review, the U.S. argued in a Dec. 5 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. While AD petitioner Wheatland Tube "is correct" in arguing that the party seeking the offset has the burden of establishing the amount and nature of a particular adjustment, Commerce in this case reasonably found that "due to prior practice in this proceeding of accepting comparable information and analyses as sufficient to grant a CEP offset that Commerce should continue to grant a CEP offset in this review" (Wheatland Tube v. United States, CIT #22-00160).
Plaintiffs in an antidumping duty review challenge at the Court of International Trade, led by Grupo Simec, filed their opposition on Dec. 2 to the Commerce Department's move to add a memorandum to the administrative record. The plaintiffs said the move to add the memo -- a questionnaire deficiencies analysis for AD respondent Grupo Simec -- more than four months after the record closed was illegal because the document had never been "filed, published" or otherwise sent to the parties (Grupo Simec v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 22-00202).
The U.S. filed new charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against Javier Aguilar, a former oil and commodities trader at Vitol, accusing the Mexico and Houston resident of conspiracy to violate the FCPA's anti-bribery provisions for schemes in Ecuador and Mexico. The case against Aguilar was originally brought to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in 2020 solely for the Ecuadorian bribery scheme (see 2009230016). The new indictment now lays out five counts against Aguilar, four for FCPA violations and one for money laundering (U.S. v. Javier Aguilar, E.D.N.Y. #20-00390).