Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met with U.K. Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds and the British prime minister's Special Adviser on Business and Investment Varun Chandra on March 18 to discuss a potential bilateral trade deal, the Commerce Department announced. The meeting follows U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's visit to the White House last month. Lutnick expressed the Trump administration's desire for a trade deal, and Commerce said efforts to develop it "will continue to unfold over the coming days and weeks."
The following lawsuit was filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. defended its use of its quarterly cost methodology in calculating exporter Officine Tecnosider's antidumping duty rate in the 2020-21 administrative review of the AD order on steel plate from Italy, arguing that petitioner Nucor Corp.'s claims to the contrary fail to show that it's the "one and only" reasonable outcome. Submitting a brief on March 19 in defense of its remand results, Commerce said it wasn't free to ignore evidence of a link between the respondent's costs and sales prices during the review period (Officine Tecnosider v. United States, CIT # 23-00001).
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky declared a mistrial in a case against defense contractor Quadrant Magnetics for violating export controls after the government sent the company thousands of pages of documents relevant to the case immediately prior to and during the company's trial (United States v. Quadrant Magnetics, W.D. Ky. # 3:22-00088).
Colombia formally accepted the World Trade Organization Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies on March 19, bringing the number of countries that have accepted the deal to 93. The WTO needs 18 more countries to accept to get to two-thirds of the membership, the threshold for the agreement to take effect.
The U.S. filed a civil forfeiture complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on March 18 against an aircraft that was allegedly smuggled from the U.S. and operated to benefit Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his representatives in Venezuela, in violation of U.S. sanctions and export controls. The aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 900 EX plane with tail number T7-ESPRT, was seized last year in the Dominican Republic at the request of the U.S., DOJ said.
No lawsuits have been filed recently at the Court of International Trade.
Parties originally excluded from an expedited countervailing duty review on Canadian softwood lumber opposed the government's bid to file a supplemental brief to a status report in a dispute on whether the excluded parties can obtain refunds of CVD cash deposits. The originally excluded parties said the U.S. failed to establish good cause for submitting a reply to the status report (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. United States, CIT # 19-00122).
Importer Under the Weather defended its motion for leave to amend its complaint in a customs case, arguing that the government's grounds for opposition to the motion, untimeliness and prejudice, don't defeat it. The importer said any delay the Court of International Trade might find due to the motion isn't "undue" and that the amendment doesn't prejudice the U.S., since the amendment would add a claim based on the "same transactions and events as the original complaint" (Under the Weather v. United States, CIT # 21-00211).
International trade attorney E.J. Thomas has rejoined Morris Manning as a senior associate, the firm announced. Thomas previously worked at the firm from 2014 to 2019, joining first as a paralegal and then rising to international trade associate. Thomas later joined Covington & Burling as an associate in 2023 and now returns to Morris Manning's international trade practice.