In the December 2007 - November 2008 AD administrative review of carbazole violet pigment 23 from China, the International Trade Administration used a surrogate value for nitric acid of 35.08 Indian rupees per kilogram from a public Indian government source it had rejected in a prior review because it included aberrational high import values.

In the February 2008 - January 2009 AD administrative review of certain frozen warmwater shrimp from India, the International Trade Administration chose to include in the selling expenses of Indian producer Liberty Group/Liberty Frozen Foods Pvt., Ltd. the full amount of a bad debt the company wrote off during the period of review, although the period included only half the firm’s fiscal year.

Chinese producers challenged the International Trade Administration’s surrogate country selections in the latest (fifth) remand redetermination results in litigation over the appropriate method for calculating wage rates in non-market economies, initiated following the antidumping duty investigation of wooden bedroom furniture from China. The plaintiffs suggested an alternative set of countries, to include Egypt, but the CIT found the agency’s approach was reasonable.

Following the May 2008 - April 2009 AD administrative review of ball bearings from France, Germany, Italy, Japan, & the U.K., the Court of International Trade refused to dismiss a challenge to two controversial agency practices brought by SKF France S.A. and affiliates. SKF’s complaint cited the International Trade Administration's practice of issuing liquidation instructions 15 days after publishing final results and its practice of zeroing (excluding the value of non-dumped transactions in the dumping margin calculation).

On August 5, 2011, the Justice Department announced that two defendants, Shaoxiong Zhou and Shaoxia Huang, both from China, have pleaded guilty to trafficking in counterfeit perfume. In their guilty pleas, Zhou and Huang admitted offering to supply counterfeit perfume to prospective buyers at a Las Vegas trade show in August 2010. A cargo shipment containing counterfeit perfumes was purchased and shipped to the U.S. in 2011. That shipment, which was seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection upon arrival in the U.S., was found to contain more than 30,000 units of perfume bearing counterfeit marks and made to resemble fragrance products from several well-known brands, including Lacoste, Polo Black and Armani Code.

On August 5, 2011, the Justice Department announced that Joel Esquenazi and Carlos Rodriguez, former executives of Terra Telecommunications Corp., have been convicted for their roles in a scheme to pay bribes to Haitian government officials at a state-owned telecommunications company, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

On August 1, 2011, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California announced that Atsushi Yamagami, a Japanese national, has pleaded guilty to illegally smuggling into the U.S. a shipment of 55 live turtles and tortoises that were concealed in snack food boxes discovered in a suitcase at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The turtles and tortoises comprised of 42 species, all protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), an international treaty that protects species being threatened by international trade. Species protected under CITES can be legally traded only if the exporting country issues a permit. Another Japanese national, Norihide Ushirozako, also pleaded guilty for carrying the reptiles discovered at LAX in return for payment from Yamagami.

An importer had sought a scope ruling from the International Trade Administration to determine whether scaffolding tube kits would be excluded from the scope of the AD order on circular welded carbon quality steel pipe from China, under the order’s exclusion for “finished scaffolding,” but the ITA concluded the kits do not qualify for the exclusion. On remand from the Court of International Trade, the ITA again concluded that Constantine Polites’ scaffolding tubes fail to meet the definition of “finished scaffolding” in the order’s exclusion because the kits require the addition of other components after importation, before they can be used as scaffolding. The CIT upheld the agency’s determination that Polites’ kits must therefore be included in the scope of the order. (Slip Op. 11-91, dated 07/28/11)

In its January 1 - June 30, 2009 investigation of narrow woven ribbons with woven selvedge from China, the International Trade Administration assigned to Yangzhou Bestpak Gifts & Crafts Co., Ltd. a separate AD duty rate that was based on the average of the rates calculated for the two largest volume exporters, one of whom got 0% while the other, which did not cooperate, got a rate of 247.65%. The Court of International Trade confirmed that the ITA was authorized to calculate the rate for non-reviewed companies in this way, but found the agency then failed to show that the resulting 123.83% separate rate reasonably reflected Bestpak’s “potential dumping margin.” The Court ruled the ITA must relate the assigned rate to the firm’s commercial activity, for example, by providing information suggesting that Bestpak dumps its sales at such levels, and remanded the issue to the agency to explain or revise the rate for Bestpak. (Slip Op. 11-90, dated 07/26/11)

Two Japanese producers challenged the redetermination results of a Court of International Trade remand in the sixteenth AD administrative review of ball bearings and parts thereof from France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom, for the period May, 2004 through April 2005. As it had in the final review results, the International Trade Administration used zeroing (excluding non-dumped price differences in the weighted average dumping margin calculation). The CIT ordered the agency to reconsider that decision and to revisit as well its rejection of one respondent’s proposal to include additional bearing design types in the model match. (Slip Op. 11-92, dated 07/29/11)