Costa Rica and Albania edged closer to acceding to the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Government Procurement after members of the Committee on Government Procurement "welcomed the market access offers recently submitted" by the two nations, the WTO said. During a March 26 meeting of the committee, WTO members acknowledged the final market access offers from Costa Rica and Albania, which were submitted in January. WTO members also agreed to boost access to historical government procurement agreement documents.
Mediation at the Court of International Trade in Dominican exporter Kingtom Aluminio's challenge to CBP's finding that the company makes aluminum extrusions using forced labor didn't result in a settlement. Judge Leo Gordon submitted a report of mediation on March 28 to the trade court noting the failed outcome of the mediation bid (Kingtom Aluminio v. United States, CIT # 24-00264).
Importer Southern Motion told the Court of International Trade that its electric DC motors were made in Vietnam and thus should have received a country of origin determination of Vietnam and not China. Filing a complaint at the trade court on March 31, Southern Motion said its products were improperly assessed Section 301 duties as a result of the COO decision (Southern Motion v. United States, CIT # 25-00033).
The International Trade Commission and court-appointed amicus Andrew Dhuey scrapped over whether Dhuey should be given access to the business proprietary information in an appeal on the Court of International Trade's rejection of a request to redact information released in a court decision (In Re United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1566).
The Commerce Department "unreasonably" used adverse facts available against exporter Tanghenam Electric Wire & Cable Co. in the anticircumvention inquiry on aluminum wire cable from China, barring the company from taking part in the certification process, Tanghenam argued in a March 28 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Tanghenam Electric Wire & Cable Co. v. United States, CIT # 25-00049).
Antidumping duty petitioner Catfish Farmers of America dropped two cases at the Court of International Trade concerning the surrogate information used in the 2018-19 and 2019-20 reviews of the AD order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam. The petitioner said that in light of the trade court's recent decision sustaining the Commerce Department's choice of India as a surrogate over Indonesia in a previous review of the same AD order (see 2503100059), it's dismissing its cases on the later two reviews. The petitioner said it's dropping the cases to conserve resources "while continuing to pursue issues relevant to surrogate country and value selection in ongoing and future administrative reviews" (Catfish Farmers of America v. United States, CIT #s 21-00380, 22-00125).
The Commerce Department has let respondents "game the system" and avoid countervailing duty liability for an otherwise countervailable program "simply by requesting a 'verification' after the fact from a willing foreign government," petitioner Titan Tire Corp. argued in a March 28 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Titan Tire said this system "creates a loophole that threatens to eviscerate the regulation through significant potential gamesmanship" (Titan Tire Corp. v. United States, CIT # 23-00233).
The Commerce Department permissibly said that backboards are veneers for purposes of identifying a benefit provided to countervailing duty respondents regarding the provision of veneers for less than adequate remuneration, the Court of International Trade held on March 27. Judge Timothy Reif said Commerce "explained adequately that the plain language of the Order’s scope defines backboard as a type of veneer."
Trade lawyer Iain Sandford has joined Foley Hoag in the Paris office of the firm's international litigation and arbitration practice, where he will work on issues related to the World Trade Organization and trade law. Sandford, a former legal officer under the WTO Secretariat and diplomat for the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, joins Foley Hoag from Sidley Austin.
DOJ filed a civil forfeiture complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on March 26 looking to collect $47 million in proceeds from the sale of nearly "one million barrels of Iranian petroleum," claiming the money is property of, or "affording a person a source of influence over," the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or its Qods Force, DOJ announced.