Trade Law Daily is providing readers with some recent top stories. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Two Alaska shipping companies renewed their bid for an expedited temporary restraining order against CBP penalties for seafood shipments found to be in violation of the Jones Act, in an Oct. 1 motion at the Alaska U.S. District Court. The court recently denied the companies' bid for the TRO on the grounds that they had not properly satisfied all the conditions to qualify for an exception to the Jones Act, finding that if the conditions were not met, the companies were likely to fail on the merits of the case (see 2109290075).
The government stands by its arguments that the lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods are “presidential actions” that are “unreviewable” by the court, the Department of Justice said in a late filing on Oct. 1 at the Court of International Trade (In Re Section 301 Cases, CIT #21-00052).
The Commerce Department wants a voluntary remand to reconsider a bevy of blanket Section 232 exclusion denials it issued to Voestalpine High Performance Metals Corp. and Edro Specialty Steels, the agency told the Court of International Trade in a Sept. 30 filing (Voestalpine High Performance Metals Corp., et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00093). Judge Miller Baker then stayed the time for plaintiffs to respond to this remand motion “until further order of the court,” in an order. The judge then instructed all parties to let the court know their position on court-annexed mediation to settle the issue of remand.
A conflict of interest allegation did not cause an antidumping duty investigation respondent to untimely file its questionnaire responses, the Commerce Department argued in a Sept. 27 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Responding to Tau-Ken Temir's brief explaining that this allegation was the reason for the delay in filing the responses, Commerce said that it did not abuse its discretion when it found that the petitioner did not interfere with TKT's ability to file the questionnaire responses (Tau-Ken Temir LLP et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00173).
The Commerce Department needs more information before it will consider allegations that solar cell imports from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are circumventing antidumping duties on China, the agency said in a Sept. 29 letter. Penned to Timothy Brightbill, lead counsel for an anonymous group of domestic U.S. solar cell manufacturers that seeks the inquiry, the letter requested a slew of information from the domestic producers to clear threshold concerns, including the full name and address of each member of the anonymous coalition.
The Justice Department moved for a voluntary remand in a duty evasion case after finding out that the parties to the investigation were not provided with certain documents in the investigation. DOJ argued that the remand should be granted since the parties should have the chance to make arguments to CBP based on this withheld information to inform the ultimate evasion decision (Norca Industrial Company, LLC et al. v. U.S., CIT #21-00192).
A federal district court denied two Alaska shipping companies' bid for an expedited temporary restraining order against CBP penalties for seafood shipments found to be in violation of the Jones Act. In a Sept. 28 opinion, Judge Sharon Gleason of the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska held that the plaintiffs, Kloosterboer International Forwarding and Alaska Reefer Management, were unlikely to succeed in the case since the pair did not have a tariff filed to cover the transportation route in question.
The Commerce Department decided to value a key solar cell input using Bulgarian imports rather than Thai imports after the Court of International Trade said the agency's use of the Thai surrogate data was improper, it told the court in Sept. 27 remand results (Solarworld Americas, Inc. et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #16-00134).
Requiring a CBP protest to obtain a refund under exclusions from Section 301 tariffs usurps the authority of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and unlawfully hands it over to CBP, importers ARP Materials and Harrison Steel Castings argued at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (ARP Materials, Inc., et al. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-2176).