The Commerce Department has released a correction to the final results of the antidumping duty administrative review on finished carbon steel flanges from India (A-533-871) covering exports of subject merchandise during the period of review Aug. 1, 2021, through July 31, 2022. Commerce said the appendix in the original final results notice, listing companies that were not individually examined, contained the names of five companies that actually were individually reviewed: Bansidhar Chiranjilal; Norma (India) Limited; R. N. Gupta & Company Limited; Uma Shanker Khandelwal & Co.; and USK Exports Private Limited. With the notice, Commerce removed those names from the appendix list.
CBP found substantial evidence that Exquis, Lollicup USA and Sanster evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders covering thermal paper, the agency said. It found that all three importers evaded the orders on thermal paper from China and found that Exquis also evaded the AD order on thermal paper from South Korea, CBP said.
CBP is extending its Global Business Identifier pilot through Feb. 23, 2027, the agency said in a notice released Feb. 9. CBP is also removing commodity and country of origin limitations on the entries eligible for the test, it said, opening the test up to more participants across a wider range of industries.
Starting March 1, non-industrial diamonds of 1 carat or greater, mined in Russia but with another country of origin cannot be entered into the U.S., whether by import or into a foreign-trade zone, unless the Office of Foreign Assets Control licensed that import.
Trade groups representing importers of motor vehicles are asking the Interagency Autos Committee to advocate for allowing used cars made during the NAFTA years to enter duty free if those vehicles qualified for NAFTA benefits, and to make it easier to prove that cars built since July 1, 2020, qualify for USMCA tariff benefits.
Automakers and their suppliers are telling the Biden administration in comments submitted ahead of an upcoming report that not having a form for certificate of origin has paradoxically made compliance more difficult. They also said that companies are having a difficult time certifying how much workers in the supply chain earn, and that the absence of final USMCA regulations are all problems for trade compliance in the more than three years since USMCA took effect.
The Commerce Department intends to exempt lithographic-grade aluminum sheet from antidumping duties on common alloy aluminum sheet from Germany (A-428-849), it said in the preliminary results of a changed circumstances review. Eastman Kodak Company requested the exemption, and the original petitioner for the AD order on German aluminum sheet, Aluminum Association Common Alloy Aluminum Sheet Trade Enforcement Working Group, as well as two other domestic producers, said they don't oppose it.
Human Rights Watch says that "some car manufacturers in China have succumbed to government pressure to apply weaker human rights and responsible sourcing standards at their Chinese joint ventures than in their global operations," and argues that car companies should disengage from all suppliers that source aluminum from Xinjiang, and should map aluminum supply chains back to the bauxite mines, whether for aluminum ingots or semi-fabricated aluminum.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Jan. 26 declined to dismiss a False Claims Act suit from a whistleblower that alleges her employer misclassified footwear to avoid tariffs. Magistrate Judge Robert Lehrburger said the fact none of the defendants served as the importer of record for the allegedly undervalued footwear imports is irrelevant for purposes of establishing liability under the FCA (United States ex rel. Devin Taylor v. GMI USA Corp., S.D.N.Y. # 16-7216).
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters: