The Commerce Department is beginning new antidumping duty investigations on paper plates from China, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as new countervailing duty investigations on paper plates from China and Vietnam, it said in a fact sheet Feb. 15. The underlying petition was filed in January (see 2401260030). The International Trade Commission is scheduled to make its preliminary injury determinations by March 11. These AD/CVD investigations will continue only if the ITC finds injury. International Trade Today will provide more details upon publication of the initiation notices in the Federal Register.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the following voluntary recalls Feb. 15:
On Feb. 15, the FDA posted new and revised versions of the following Import Alerts on the detention without physical examination of:
USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation announced Feb. 15 that Special Import Quota #18 for upland cotton will be established Feb. 22, allowing importation of 6,540,756 kilograms (30,041 bales) of upland cotton, the same as the previous quota period. The quota will apply to upland cotton purchased not later than May 21, 2024, and entered into the U.S. by Aug. 19, 2024. The quota is equivalent to one week's consumption of cotton by domestic mills at the seasonally adjusted average rate for the October through December 2023 period, the most recent three months for which data is available.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has asked Mexico whether RV Fresh Foods in Uruapan is denying its workers the right to collective bargain. The firm, which makes guacamole, is the first food manufacturer targeted through the USMCA Rapid Response Labor Mechanism. COCENA, a Mexican union confederation, alleges that the company restricted the union's access to the facility and intervened in union delegate elections.
The U.S. will tell CBP to resume liquidation of aluminum parts coming from Asiaway Automotive Components Mexico, a Chinese-headquartered firm that does die casting and machining of aluminum parts in San Luis Potosí. According to Asiaway's website, the factory just opened in June 2023.
Georgia woman Skeeter-Jo Stoute-Francois filed suit at the Court of International Trade Feb. 16 to contest six questions on the October 2021 customs broker license exam. In her complaint, Stoute-Francois said that after appealing the test results to the Treasury Department, she was left just short of the 75% grade needed to pass the test, failing at 73.75% (Skeeter-Jo Stoute-Francois v. U.S., CIT # 24-00046).
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
A listing of recent Commerce Department antidumping and countervailing duty messages posted on CBP's website Feb. 15, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. The messages are available by searching for the listed CBP message number at CBP's ADCVD Search page.
CBP found substantial evidence that Legion Furniture evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders covering quartz surface products from China, but didn't find substantial evidence that Vanity Art evaded the same orders. CBP, in an Enforce and Protect Act Notice of Determination dated Feb. 9, said that Legion declared the merchandise as Vietnamese-origin wood furniture without declaring the quartz surface product components as subject to the orders on entry.