The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) said comparability findings are coming by Sept. 1, 2025, for "all harvesting nations that did not submit an application for a comparability finding" and all harvesting nations the NMFS has already preliminarily said will be denied a comparability finding. The announcement came as part of a settlement of a lawsuit from three wildlife advocacy groups against the NMFS's failure to ban fish or fish products exported from fisheries that don't meet U.S. bycatch standards under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (Natural Resources Defense Council v. Gina Raimondo, CIT # 24-00148).
Foreign workers from Bangladesh are preparing to sue Sony and Panasonic in U.S. court over forced labor conditions at their former employer in Malaysia, Kawaguchi Manufacturing, a plastics supplier for the two companies.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the weeks of Dec. 30 - Jan. 5 and Jan. 6-12:
CBP has released its Jan. 8 Customs Bulletin (Vol. 59, No. 2), which includes the following ruling actions:
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 8 denied the government's bid for default judgment against importer Rayson Global and its owner and CEO Doris Cheng in a customs penalty case, with Judge Timothy Stanceu taking issue with the U.S. claim for a monetary penalty totaling nearly $3.4 million.
CBP has released its Jan. 1 Customs Bulletin (Vol. 59, No. 1). It contains two notices of information collection activities, one related to the declaration of free entry of returned American products (CBP Form 3311), and the other on documentation requirements for articles entered under various special tariff treatment provisions -- that is, articles classified under subheadings 9801.00.10, 9802.00.20, 9802.00.40, 9802.00.50, 9802.00.60 and 9817.00.40.
The Commerce Department is amending countervailing duty rates set in its original CVD investigations on forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany (C-428-848) originally published Dec. 11, 2020, to align with the final decision in a court case that challenged the way the CVD rates were calculated.
The Commerce Department has published amended final results of the countervailing duty administrative review on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, whether or not assembled into modules, from China (C-570-980), originally published July 11, 2023, to align with the final decision in a court case that challenged a rate in those results.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the weeks of Dec. 16-22 and 23-29:
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