Judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held argument on the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana's decision to transfer a case against the legality of International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs and Section 232 tariffs as applied to tribal members to the Court of International Trade. One of the judges, Judge William Fletcher, appeared skeptical of the government's claim that the court can't review the district court's transfer order (Susan Webber v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 9th Cir. # 25-2717).
Egypt launched safeguard investigations on semifinished products of iron or non-alloy steel (billets) and cold rolled coil, galvanized steel and prepainted steel, notifying the World Trade Organization's Committee on Safeguards of the two investigations. Parties interested in submitting their views on the investigations can do so within 30 days of the investigations' notices being published in the Official Gazette.
Importers who have paid tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act should look to affirmatively safeguard their right to receive refunds should the Supreme Court vacate in some form President Donald Trump's tariffs imposed under the statute, various law firms said. The attorneys issued the alerts in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to hear two cases on the legality of IEEPA tariffs on an expedited basis (see 2509090058).
A jury convicted a Georgia businessman on Sept. 15 for his role in a scheme to bribe Honduran government officials to secure business for a Georgia-based manufacturer of law enforcement uniforms and accessories in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, DOJ announced. Carl Zaglin was found to have paid bribes to secure business with "Comite Tecnico del Fideicomiso para la Administracion del Fondo de Proteccion y Seguridad Poblacional (TASA), a Honduran governmental entity that procured goods for the Honduran National Police and other Honduran security agencies."
The U.S. and surety firm Aegis Security Insurance moved to stay the government's case against Aegis to collect unpaid duties on entries of garlic imported in 2002, pending the government's appeal of a separate case against Aegis. The case on appeal concerns the Court of International Trade's decision finding that its claim for unpaid duties against a surety company on an entry liquidated in 2009 violates both the statute of limitations for seeking payment and an implied requirement in the bond that demand for payment be made in a reasonable amount of time (see 2508080056). In the case the parties are looking to stay, Aegis said the six-year statute of limitations to file a claim for unpaid duties runs from the date of liquidation of the underlying entries (see 2507020029) (United States v. Aegis Security Insurance, CIT # 25-00051).
The government, namely CBP and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, should be stopped from denying the application of Section 301 China tariff exclusions to importer Mitsubishi Power Americas' selective catalytic reduction imports, Mitsubishi told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Filing its opening brief on Sept. 12, Mitsubishi said CBP and USTR "misrepresented the original grant of the exclusions to Mitsubishi" when they approved the requests, leading the importer to rely on these "misrepresentations to its detriment" (Mitsubishi Power Americas v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 25-1828).
The World Trade Organization's Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies took effect Sept. 15 during a special General Council meeting after instruments of acceptance were received from Brazil, Kenya, Vietnam and Tonga, the WTO announced. Those acceptances brought the total number over the two-thirds threshold needed for the deal to enter into force (see 2508250013).
The Court of International Trade on Sept. 15 sustained the Commerce Department's decision on remand to replace existing Brazilian surrogate value information for antidumping duty respondent Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry's plywood input with Malaysian import data. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves upheld the move, which led to a slight drop in Senmao's AD rate to 14.35% from 16.17%, after no challenges to the remand results were received.
The Commerce Department properly decided not to collapse an Italian antidumping duty respondent with its Romanian input supplier on the grounds that the input supplier isn't a "producer" of subject merchandise as defined by the AD statute, the Court of International Trade held on Sept. 15. Judge M. Miller Baker said Commerce's justification isn't impermissibly post hoc, despite the fact that it wasn't established during the challenged AD review, since the issue is "one of statutory construction."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit decided Sept. 12 to stay proceedings in California's case against the legality of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, though it denied the government's stay request in a similar case brought by members of the Blackfeet Nation tribe. Oral argument in the tribal members' lawsuit remains scheduled for Sept. 17 before Judges William Fletcher, Ronald Gould and Ana de Alba (State of California v. Donald J. Trump, 9th Cir. # 25-3493) (Susan Webber v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 9th Cir. # 25-2717).