The Court of International Trade erred in ruling that importer Blue Sky The Color of Imagination's planning calendars are diaries under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 4820.10.2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Dec. 4. Judges Alan Lourie, William Bryson and Raymond Chen said the trade court violated the principle of stare decisis by skirting the CAFC's prior interpretation of the term "diary."
Joseph Grossman-Trawick, an international trade attorney, has left the Commerce Department to join King & Spalding as an associate, he announced on LinkedIn. Grossman-Trawick joined Commerce in 2023, working as an attorney in the Office of the Chief Counsel for Trade Enforcement and Compliance.
DOJ's Trade Fraud Task Force plans to model its tariff enforcement efforts after the DOJ Health Care Fraud Unit's "data-drive playbook to develop leads," DOJ Criminal Division Senior Counsel Cody Herche said at the American Conference Institute's annual anti-corruption conference, according to attorneys at Morgan Lewis. The attorneys said Herche's comment indicates "potential criminal violations of US tariff laws," including the False Claims Act and the statute against smuggling goods into the U.S.
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
A Wisconsin federal court on Dec. 1 dismissed a case from a former prisoner at the Nunan Chishan Prison in China against Milwaukee Electric Tool and its parent company, Techtronic Industries, for allegedly importing goods made with forced labor. Judge Brett Ludwig of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin held that the civil remedy of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), which is the statute the prisoner sued under, doesn't apply to conduct occurring outside the U.S. (Xu Lun v. Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp., E.D. Wis. # 24-803).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Dec. 2 granted the government's voluntary remand motion for the Commerce Department to reconsider its use of the Cohen's d test in an antidumping duty case in light of the Federal Circuit's decisions in Stupp v. U.S. and Marmen v. U.S. largely invalidating the agency's use of the test, which is used to detect "masked" dumping (Mid Continent Steel & Wire v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1556).
International trade attorney Navpreet Moonga has joined Hogan Lovells as a senior associate, according to her LinkedIn page. Moonga joins Hogan from Wilson Sonsini, where she worked as an associate since 2023. Prior to Wilson Sonsini, Moonga worked at Dechert and Barnes Richardson.
The Court of International Trade on Dec. 2 dismissed a pair of cases for failure to file a complaint within the statutorily prescribed time to do so. Both cases were brought by countervailing duty petitioners to contest the Commerce Department's final determination in the CVD investigation on corrosion-resistant steel products from Canada (see 2510290053). The companies, Steel Dynamics and Nucor Corporation, are represented by different attorneys, and neither immediately responded to requests for comment (Steel Dynamics v. U.S., CIT # 25-00237) (Nucor Corporation v. U.S., CIT # 25-00238).
A total of four hardwood plywood importers or exporters dropped their cases at the Court of International Trade contesting the Commerce Department's final results of the 2021-22 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on hardwood plywood products from China.
The Commerce Department unlawfully found that the South Korean government's provision of electricity for less than adequate remuneration (LTAR) was de facto specific based on heavy consumption by the chemical industry, exporter Kumho P&B Chemicals argued in a Dec. 2 motion for summary judgment at the Court of International Trade (Kumho P&B Chemicals v. United States, CIT Consol. # 25-00143).