Jacob Kopnick

International trade attorney Benjamin Bay has been elevated to partner at The Bristol Group, the firm's managing partner Adam Gordon announced on LinkedIn. Bay joined Bristol in 2023, having previously worked as assistant general counsel in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

The World Trade Organization established a dispute settlement panel during the Dec. 18 meeting of the Dispute Settlement Body to review the EU's antidumping duties on fatty acid from Indonesia, the WTO announced. The EU said it "regretted Indonesia's decision" to bring the dispute, believing the measures to be in line with WTO rules. The bloc added that it will preserve the "availability of appeal review" through use of the multiparty interim appeal arrangement, a contingency that safeguards the right to appeal since the Appellate Body is not functioning at this time."

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

The Commerce Department appropriately found that details about U.S. seafood seller Luscious Seafood's wholesaling operations don't support the company's claim that it was a bona fide wholesaler of the domestic like product, the U.S. argued in a reply brief filed last week at the Court of International Trade. The government said that, as a result, Commerce permissibly found Luscious' request for an administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam to be invalid (Luscious Seafood v. United States, CIT # 24-00069).

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 18 upheld the Commerce Department's decision on remand to drop the countervailing duty on exporter Risen Energy Co. related to its alleged receipt of benefits under China's Export Buyer's Credit Program. Judge Jane Restani said the move was in line with the court's prior decision.

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 19 declined to grant victory to G&H Diversified Manufacturing on the importer's claims that CBP previously, as part of its role in granting a Section 232 duty exclusion, already said the company's imports were subject to the exclusion. Judge Timothy Reif said open questions of fact still exist with regard to the extent of CBP's role in the exclusion process.

The World Trade Organization and the Asian Development Bank jointly launched a database on trade in critical minerals to boost transparency on those minerals and "support the clean energy transition," the WTO announced. The database provides "up-to-date critical minerals trade data, related policies, and visualisations of trade patterns based on publicly available sources," the WTO said. "Data can be visualised as bar charts, tree maps, and network graphs, providing insights into the main trading partners, product specialization, and trade networks."

The chair of the World Trade Organization General Council, Norway's Petter Olberg, detailed during the Dec. 16-17 general council meeting the "significant progress" made on WTO dispute settlement reform talks, though he encouraged members to find a way forward on the form an appeal or review mechanism should take.

The Supreme Court on Dec. 18 agreed to take up TikTok's case against the bill either banning the app or forcing it to divest its U.S. operations. The court granted the TikTok's petition for writ of certiorari though it deferred its application for an injunction against the bill pending oral argument. Initial briefs in the suit are due by Dec. 27 (TikTok v. Merrick Garland, Sup. Ct. # 24-656).

Importer Performance Additives told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that the notion that Congress created a "two-track framework" for deemed liquidation of drawback claims where some claims aren't subject to deemed liquidation at all and others aren't subject to any time limit on liquidation is "nonsense." Filing a reply brief last week, the company said this interpretation of the statutory framework is "blatantly contrary to Congress' stated intent" (Performance Additives v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-2059).