The Court of International Trade on Dec. 22 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping duty case in which the agency was told to verify a Thai mattress importer's data "insofar as the Department relied upon that data." Judge M. Miller Baker noted because the importer, Saffron Living Co., withdrew from the case and no remaining party opposes the remand results, the court will uphold the results and the associated 763.28% antidumping duty rate for Saffron.
Plaintiffs in the massive ongoing Section 301 litigation "ignore" the president's role in imposing the China tariffs, the U.S. said last week, arguing that the thousands of companies leading the case would have the court impose an improper standard of review (HMTX Industries v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1891).
Exporter Jilin Bright Future Chemicals Co. failed to raise arguments on the surrogate value of bituminous coal in an antidumping duty review, the Court of International Trade ruled Dec. 21. Judge Mark Barnett said that despite Jilin Bright's argument, "this case fits squarely into the classic administrative exhaustion paradigm."
Iceland's Einar Gunnarsson, the chair of the fisheries subsidies negotiations at the World Trade Organization, sent a draft text on the second wave of fisheries subsidies talks to get negotiations "over the finish line" at the 13th Ministerial Conference to be held in February 2024, the WTO announced. Gunnarsson said work will resume after the holidays "with a 'fish month' of continuous negotiations" that will last until mid-February, when texts for MC13 must be completed.
The International Trade Commission asked the Court of International Trade to temporarily redact its decision sustaining an injury determination on mattresses since the commission believes there to be business proprietary information in the opinion that may need to be redacted (CVB v. United States, CIT # 21-00288).
The U.S. on Dec. 20 added an attorney to the massive Section 301 litigation currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The government added Megan Grimball, assistant general counsel in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, bringing the number of government attorneys involved in the suit to nine. Grimball has worked at USTR since 2018 and, before that, as an attorney-adviser at the State Department.
The government's claim that a group of Canadian softwood lumber exporters shouldn't be able to intervene in an antidumping duty case is based on "an unreasonably narrow, absurd, and constitutionally problematic reading of" the statute on parties entitled to participate in civil actions, the exporters argued (Government of Canada v. United States, CIT Consol. # 23-00187).
The Court of International Trade on Dec. 21 sustained the Commerce Department's continued rejection of exporter AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke's proposed quality code for sour service pressure vessel plate. Upholding Commerce's fourth remand results in the antidumping duty investigation on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from Germany, Judge Leo Gordon said Dillinger didn't make the "requisite showing to demonstrate that reconsideration is appropriate here" after the court already rejected the claim.
Informal negotiations on revising the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement rules "are nearing their conclusion," Marco Molina, the Guatemala deputy permanent representative, told members of the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body at its Dec. 18 meeting. Molina said the goal is to have a "fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all members by 2024," according to the WTO.
A Kansas business owner pleaded guilty Dec. 19 for his part in a scheme to violate U.S. export laws by filing false export forms and shipping "sophisticated and controlled" avionics equipment to Russian customers without export licenses, DOJ announced. Cyril Buyanovsky, owner of KanRus Trading Co. also agreed to forfeit over $450,000 worth of avionics equipment along with a $50,000 personal forfeiture. He faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.