Following recent appeals court decisions that asked the International Trade Administration to explain its continued practice of zeroing (excluding the negative dumping margins of non-dumped imports from overall dumping margin) in administrative reviews after having ended it in investigations, the Court of International Trade has accepted a partly new set of justifications from the ITA. This CIT ruling comes on the heels of the ITA's final rule that eliminated zeroing as the normal procedure in administrative reviews.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida has announced that Elias Garcia and Maria Plancarte have each been sentenced to one year and one day in prison, followed by terms of supervised release of two years, for conspiring to violate the Lacey Act by smuggling jaguar skins from Mexico and trafficking in them in the U.S. They also face deportation from the U.S. upon completion of their term of imprisonment. No fine was imposed as the judge determined the defendants could not afford a criminal fine. The jaguar is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Under cover of a plant seed company that Garcia and Plancarte jointly operated, the defendants sold two jaguar pelts to undercover Fish and Wildlife Service agents and planned a future sale of up to 10 jaguar pelts to be smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Serviced has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for its approval, a proposed rule entitled: "Forfeiture Procedures Under the Endangered Species Act and the Lacey Act Amendments."

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided on February 29, 2012 to remand, in part, for further proceedings the International Trade Commission’s negative final determination in the patent infringement proceedings on certain variable speed wind turbines and components thereof (337-TA-641). In response to a petition by General Electric to ITC that Mitsubishi had infringed on three patents (‘039, ‘221, and ‘985), the ITC’s January 2010 final determination had held that no patents were infringed and/or the domestic industry requirement was not met. The ‘039 patent expired on February 1, 2011, and CAFC dismissed that portion of the appeal as moot, vacating the ITC’s rulings as to that patent. CAFC now affirms the ITC’s ruling that the ‘221 patent is not infringed, but reverses the ITC’s determination of no domestic industry as to the ‘985 patent, and remands for further proceedings.

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

Chinese producer/exporters argued that the International Trade Administration made six ministerial errors in the first AD administrative review of small diameter graphite electrodes from China, covering the period August 21, 2008 through January 31, 2010. The ITA agreed in part and sought court leave to correct three of the alleged errors, as well as one other ministerial error it had discovered (the agency had intended to publish amended final results before the Chinese producers filed suit).

On March 2, 2012, the Justice Department announced that Enrique Gomez De Molina, of Miami Beach, Florida, has been sentenced to 20 months in prison for illegally trafficking in various endangered and protected wildlife. De Molina was also sentenced to one year of supervised release to follow his prison term, a $6,000 fine and was ordered to forfeit all of the smuggled wildlife in his possession.

On March 2, 2012, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California announced that Tze Chao, a former scientist with DuPont, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit economic espionage. He admitted that he provided trade secrets concerning DuPont's proprietary information to companies controlled by the Chinese government.

Furniture Brands International, Inc. a domestic manufacturer that had filed questionnaire responses for the International Trade Commission in 2005 opposing the issuance of an AD duty order on wooden bedroom furniture from China, lost at the Court of International Trade when it later sought a share of AD duties resulting from the order, pursuant to the Byrd Amendment (aka the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000, CDSOA). Furniture Brands then sought an injunction from the CIT, pending an appeal, to delay the distribution of AD duties to other domestic companies that had supported the petition, but the CIT has now denied the request to hold up the funds distribution.

Consistent with other recent rulings on similar claims, the Court of International Trade dismissed a challenge by domestic manufacturer Standard Furniture Manufacturing Co., Inc. to its exclusion from the list of affected domestic parties (ADPs) eligible to receive a share of AD duties collected on wooden bedroom furniture from China under the Byrd Amendment (aka the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 (CDSOA), and its request for an injunction to delay the distribution of duties to ADPs. The CIT chiefly based its dismissal on comparable challenges addressed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in SKF USA Inc. v. U.S. (556 F. 3d 1337-2009) (SKF).