The Commerce Department can limit its comparator group in assessing whether a certain enterprise or industry is the "predominant user" of a subsidy for purposes of determining de facto specificity, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Dec. 5. Judges Jimmie Reyna, Sharon Prost and Raymond Chen said the limitation on the comparator group must only be "sufficiently reasonable."
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
Nebraska man Byungmin Chae on Dec. 3 urged the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to reconsider his second case against the results of his April 2018 customs broker license examination after the court dismissed the case on the basis that Chae should have raised his claims in his first case on the test (Byungmin Chae v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 25-1379).
Petitioner Brooklyn Bedding's argument against two issues in a case on the antidumping duty investigation on Indonesian mattresses amount to "mere disagreement" with the Commerce Department's decisions, "falling far short of the required showing," the U.S. told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Dec. 3 reply brief (PT. Zinus Global Indonesia v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 25-1674).
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).