Jacob Kopnick

A lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina over a shipping company's alleged gross negligence in handling a hemp shipment should be tossed for lack of jurisdiction, defendant Planet Nine Private Air said in a Sept. 1 brief. If the court decides not to dismiss the matter, it should be transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, since that is where Planet Nine primarily does business and the signing of the contract in dispute was held there, the brief said (We CBD, LLC et al. v. Plante Nine Private Air, LLC, W.D.N.C. #21-00352).

The Court of International Trade remanded parts and sustained parts of the Commerce Department's final results in the fifth administrative review of the countervailing duty order on crystaline silicon photovoltaic cells from China, in a Sept. 3 order. Judge Jane Restani sustained Commerce's specificity finding for the aluminum extrusions for less than adequate remuneration (LTAR) program, the agency's chosen benchmark for the land value for the LTAR program, and plaintiff and mandatory respondent Canadian Solar's lack of creditworthiness in 2016. Conversely, the judge remanded Commerce's entered value adjustment finding for Canadian Solar and its determination that the respondents benefited from China's Export Buyer's Credit Program.

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

CBP was incorrect to not extend a Section 301 tariff exclusion on side protective attachments for cars onto Keystone Automotive Operations' entries, the importer said in its Sept. 2 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Claiming that the auto parts fit under the terms of the exclusion, Keystone is challenging CBP's deemed denial of its protest (Keystone Automotive Operations, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00215).

The record doesn't support the claim that the Commerce Department erred by applying constructed value instead of plaintiff Z.A. Sea Foods Private Limited's third-country sales data to Vietnam when calculating normal value in an antidumping review, the Justice Department said in a Sept. 2 brief at the Court of International Trade. Responding to ZASF's motion for judgment, DOJ said that instead, record evidence actually shows that Commerce reasonably found that ZASF's sales to its Vietnamese customers were not representative, given evidence showing that the customers were processors and exporters of shrimp to the U.S. market (Z.A. Sea Foods Private Limited et al v. United States, CIT #21-00031).

Tapered roller bearing importer Wanxiang America Corporation does not have jurisdiction to challenge guidance issued from the Commerce Department to CBP on the assessment of antidumping duties, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a Sept. 2 decision upholding a ruling from the Court of International Trade. Jurisdiction under the court's residual jurisdiction, Section 1581(i), cannot be claimed by "creative pleading," and proper jurisdiction for Wanxiang America's case could have been claimed elsewhere based on the "true nature of the action," the court said. The Federal Circuit pointed to a CIT's denied protest jurisdiction under Section 1581(a), and antidumping and countervailing duty challenge jurisdiction under Section 1581(c), as potential jurisdictional homes for the action.

Plaintiff and defendant-intervenor OCP S.A. wants a statutory injunction on the liquidation of all of its entries, even those beyond the period of review for the contested countervailing duty investigation, pushing back against the government's arguments in a Sept. 1 brief. The U.S. contested that OCP satisfied the "irreparable harm" standard required of injunction motions since the "threat of liquidation" from entries beyond the first period of review "is too far in the future" (The Mosaic Company, et al. v. U.S., CIT Consol. #21-00116).

Chinese wood cabinet and vanities exporter Dalian Meisen Woodworking Co. moved, unopposed, for a preliminary injunction against liquidation of its entries in a countervailing duty challenge at the Court of International Trade, in a Sept. 1 filing. That's despite the fact that the challenge is of the underlying countervailing duty investigation on the wood cabinet and vanities from China, and liquidation of the entries is suspended until the conclusion of the first administrative review (Dalian Meisen Woodworking Co., Ltd. v. U.S., CIT #20-00110).

The level of trade in the U.S. is irrelevant to the Universal Tube and Plastic Industries' argument that the Commerce Department incorrectly found there to be only a single level of trade in the home market in an antidumping duty case, plaintiffs led by Universal Tube argued in an Aug. 27 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Seeing as the Department of Justice and the antidumping petitioner repeatedly raised this point to argue against Universal's position, it is unclear whether they did so to confuse the court with "irrelevant" details or just don't "understand the distinctions," the brief said (Universal Tube and Plastic Industries v. U.S., CIT # 20-03944).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld a district court decision finding that a group of Chinese banks are not in contempt for failing to enforce a series of orders barring transferring, withdrawing or disposing of funds into the accounts of entities guilty of trademark infringement in an Aug. 30 order. Until the contempt motion, the plaintiff, investment firm Next Investments, never sought to enforce the orders against the banks in question, precluding them from now succeeding, in part, on a contempt motion, the appellate court held.