Mediation at the Court of International Trade resulted in a settlement of all issues in importer Valbruna Slater Stainless' suit on the Commerce Department's denials of its Section 232 steel tariff exclusion requests. Judge Leo Gordon served as mediator and told the court on Nov. 12 that the mediation settled the case (Valbruna Slater Stainless v. United States, CIT # 21-00027).
Jacob Kopnick
Jacob Kopnick, Associate Editor, is a reporter for Trade Law Daily and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and International Trade Today. He joined the Warren Communications News team in early 2021 covering a wide range of topics including trade-related court cases and export issues in Europe and Asia. Jacob's background is in trade policy, having spent time with both CSIS and USTR researching international trade and its complexities. Jacob is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Public Policy.
The World Trade Organization General Council will hold a special meeting Nov. 28-29 to confirm Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to a second term, General Council Chair Petter Olberg announced. The move comes after no other candidates joined the race by the Nov. 8 nomination deadline. Okonjo-Iweala will present her vision for the WTO on Nov. 28 followed by a question-and-answer segment. A vote on the term extension is scheduled for Nov. 29.
A Venezuela-based subsidiary of Telefonica, a global telecommunications operator based in Spain, will pay over $85.2 million to settle charges that the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, DOJ announced. The U.S. alleged that Telefonica Venezolana bribed Venezuelan government officials in exchange for preferential access to U.S. dollars in a currency auction.
The U.S. asked the Court of International Trade to amend the preliminary injunction in a suit challenging certain Section 301 action on needles and syringes to reflect the government's stipulation that they will refund any Section 301 duties found to have been unlawfully collected on importer Retractable Technologies' entries. Retractable consented to the move (Retractable Technologies v. United States, CIT # 24-00185).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department erred in finding that the South Korean government's provision of electricity below cost was de facto specific in the 2022 review of the countervailing duty order on cut-to-length carbon-quality steel plate from South Korea, exporter Hyundai Steel Co. argued in a Nov. 12 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Hyundai added that Commerce violated the statute on specificity in CVD cases in relying on the "original electricity consumption data" for its de facto specificity finding (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00190).
The Court of International Trade failed to take anti-forced labor advocacy group International Rights Advocates' (IRAdvocates') allegations as true when ruling on whether the group had standing to challenge CBP's inaction on a petition to ban cocoa from Cote d'Ivoire, IRAdvocates argued in its opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Nov. 12. The advocacy group said it suffered injury-in-fact, since CBP's "failure to enforce Section 307" deprived the group of a "major tool in its foundational purpose of ending forced child labor in cocoa harvesting" (International Rights Advocates v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-2316).
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York this month denied a request from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co. to help the company obtain access to certain discovery documents that are restricted by the Bureau of Industry and Security. Judge Cheryl Pollak said that while DOJ marked hundreds of thousands of documents at a lower level of classification than BIS, which would give Huawei greater access to the records, the documents are "still subject to further review by BIS" (United States v. Huawei Technologies, E.D.N.Y. # 18-00457).
Tomato exporters led by NS Brands failed to show good cause to untimely intervene in a case on the Commerce Department's 1996 antidumping duty investigation on Mexican tomatoes, petitioner The Florida Tomato Exchange argued on Nov. 8. The petitioner said NS Brands knew when the case started that the parties were challenging Commerce's failure to continue the proceeding and "has shown no reason it could not have timely intervened in this proceeding" (Bioparques de Occidente v. United States, CIT Consol. # 19-00204).
The EU and Taiwan settled the EU's dispute at the World Trade Organization on Taiwan's offshore wind auctions, the bloc's Directorate-General for Trade announced Nov. 8. The EU said Taiwan committed to "introducing greater flexibility in the way the winning projects from the latest auction are taken forward."