The EU on Nov. 24 formally requested dispute settlement consultations at the World Trade Organization regarding China's antidumping duties on EU brandy imports. China has 10 days to respond to the request to find a mutually convenient format and date for the talks.
Two Dominican nationals were sentenced to two years in prison and then two years of supervised release for smuggling juvenile American eels from Puerto Rico, DOJ announced. Saul Enrique Jose De la Cruz was sentenced on Nov. 21, and Simon De la Cruz Paredes was sentenced earlier this month.
No lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade.
The Commerce Department properly decided not to reopen the record to inflate Mexican surrogate wage data and ultimately choose Brazilian wage data in the antidumping duty investigation on beer kegs from China, the Court of International Trade said. Sustaining Commerce's third remand results in the case, Judge M. Miller Baker said the agency reasonably said it was "unnecessary to reopen the record to inflate the Mexican wage figures" when the Brazilian data "suited the agency's purposes."
CBP failed to consider material evidence when it found that importer Scioto Valley Woodworking didn't evade the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on wooden cabinets and vanities from China, the Court of International Trade said in a decision made public last week. Judge Lisa Wang said CBP didn't sufficiently consider evidence of the Haiyan Group's ownership of Scioto and its affiliated supplier, Alno, and it didn't adequately discuss the contents of an additional warehouse disclosed by Alno.
The facilitator of the World Trade Organization dispute settlement reform talks told members at a Nov. 21 heads of delegation meeting to be "practical and flexible" in ramping up negotiations, the WTO said. With just two weeks to go before the final General Council meeting of 2024, Usha Dwarka-Canabady urged members to stay focused on restoring the dispute settlement system's functionality and not on creating a new system with "more onerous obligations."
Importer Printing Textiles, doing business as Berger Textiles, will appeal a Court of International Trade decision sustaining the Commerce Department's scope ruling that includes Printing Textile's "Canvas Banner Matisse" imports within the scope of the antidumping duty order on artist canvas from China (see 2410090022). In its decision, the trade court found the following sentence to be ambiguous: "Priming/coating includes the application of a solution, designed to promote the adherence of artist materials, such as paint or ink, to the fabric." The court said Commerce's interpretation of this sentence wasn't "per se unreasonable," rejecting Printing Textiles' bid for a narrow interpretation of the words "priming/coating" (Printing Textiles, d/b/a Berger Textiles v. U.S., CIT # 23-00192).
The U.S. moved for a default judgment against importer E-Dong U.S.A. in a customs penalty suit at the Court of International Trade after the company failed to respond to the government's complaint. The U.S. brought the suit in March accusing E-Dong of failing to pay federal excise tax on entries of soju bottles from South Korea (see 2403290035). The government said the company entered the soju via "material or false statement" by failing to reference any of the owed excise tax. The summons and complaint were filed on March 28, and on Oct. 12, E-Dong was deemed served (U.S. v. E-Dong, U.S.A., CIT # 24-00066).
The U.S. defended the methodology it used to calculate the amount of supplier subsides attributable to exporters Les Produits Forestiers D&G and its cross-owned affiliates, led by Les Produits Forestiers Portbec, on remand in a case on the expedited countervailing duty review of Canadian softwood lumber. Filing remand comments on Nov. 15, the government said two alternative methodologies floated by the petitioner, the Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations, both fall short (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 19-00122).
The Court of International Trade in a confidential decision Nov. 22 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in the 2017-18 review of the antidumping duty order on aluminum foil from China. In the case, exporter Jiangsu Zhongji Lamination Materials and the U.S. disagreed on selections for world benchmark prices for an input and for land purchases (see 2410280038). The exporter preferred an input price benchmark that was a composite of GlobalTrade Atlas data and Commodities Research Unit data, while Commerce went with Trade Data Monitor data (Jiangsu Zhongji Lamination Materials Co. v. U.S., CIT # 21-00133).