The Commerce Department released a final rule making extensive changes to its antidumping and countervailing duty regulations, including on scope and anti-circumvention inquiries. Currently scheduled for publication Sept. 20, the final rule is intended to “strengthen the administration and enforcement of AD/CVD laws, make such administration and enforcement more efficient, and to create new enforcement tools for Commerce to address circumvention and evasion of trade remedies.”
The Department of Justice and two Alaska shipping companies squared off over a lesser-known element of the Jones Act in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska in a fight for a preliminary injunction against CBP penalties for seafood shipments. Recently granted expedited consideration by the court, both parties submitted their briefs over the PI and a temporary restraining order in a four-day span following the order. DOJ and the two companies, Kloosterboer International Forwarding and Alaska Reefer Management, also debated whether the companies' claims that CBP violated their due process rights when imposing the penalties had a likelihood of succeeding.
The Commerce Department released a final rule making extensive changes to its antidumping and countervailing duty regulations, including on scope and anti-circumvention inquiries. Currently scheduled for publication Sept. 20, the final rule is intended to “strengthen the administration and enforcement of AD/CVD laws, make such administration and enforcement more efficient, and to create new enforcement tools for Commerce to address circumvention and evasion of trade remedies.”
The U.S. and two respondents in an antidumping duty review backed the Commerce Department's decision to drop a particular market situation determination on South Korean steel, in recently filed briefs, arguing the agency relied on what evidence it had after the Court of International Trade ruled against evidence upon which it had originally relied to make the finding (SeAH Steel Co., et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #19-00086).
The Court of International Trade on Sept. 14 struck down two Commerce Department scope rulings that found door thresholds are not finished products and therefore within the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China. Judge Timothy Stanceu said that Commerce's contention that the door thresholds from Worldwide Door Components and Columbia Aluminum Products were not finished products is contradicted by record evidence, remanding the rulings to the agency for reconsideration.
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's final results of the third administrative review of the antidumping duty order on steel nails from Taiwan, in a Sept. 14 opinion. Chief Judge Mark Barnett found that Commerce's use of mandatory respondent Unicatch Industrial Co.'s above-cost home market sales to calculate normal value was legal, the agency's decision to not include Unicatch's antidumping duty deposits in the company's freight revenues was proper, and that Commerce's move to increase Unicatch's cost of production to account for purchases from an affiliated supplier at less than market value was appropriate.
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Eteros Technologies USA's challenge of CBP's seizure of its motor frame assemblies seeks to answer a “critical legal question" on the interaction of state and federal marijuana laws, the company said in a motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade. CBP seized the assemblies, finding them to meet the federal definition of “drug paraphernalia.” This move set the lines of the case over whether CBP can ignore the authorization exemption for drug paraphernalia where those goods are allowed to be imported and sold in a given state, Eteros said (Eteros Technologies USA, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00287).
Hong Kong-based apparel company, Changji Esquel Textile (CJE), should not be granted a preliminary injunction against its placement on the Commerce Department's Entity List, the U.S. argued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Resuming litigation after talks between Commerce and CJE broke down (see 2108300058), the Department of Justice said CJE is unlikely to succeed in its case and that the company has not established certain and imminent irreparable harm (Changji Esquel Textile Co. Ltd., et al. v. Gina M. Raimondo, et al., D.D.C. #21-1798).
The Commerce Department's alleged misinterpretation of a 2013 Section 129 determination that partially revoked an antidumping duty order on Shantou Red Garden Food Processing (Shantou RGFP) has the company facing millions of dollars in antidumping duty liability, Shantou RGFP said in a Sept. 3 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Due to a misspelling that Commerce refuses to correct, Shantou RGFP found itself participating in an administrative review and being assigned an antidumping duty cash deposit rate even though it was previously found to be outside of the order, the company said (Shantou Red Garden Food Processing Co., Ltd. et al v. U.S., CIT # 20-03947).