Importer Seneca Foods Corp. opposed the U.S. attempt to extend the deadline to file its remand results in a suit on the Commerce Department's decision to reject the company's requests for exclusions from Section 232 steel and aluminum duties. The government asked for another 31 days to file its remand decision after initially being given 90 days to conduct the remand and a 45-day extension (Seneca Foods Corp. v. United States, CIT # 22-00243).
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in a Feb. 26 confidential order in a case on the antidumping duty investigation on raw honey from Argentina. In a letter to the parties, Judge Claire Kelly said it's her intention to issue a public version of the opinion on or shortly after March 5, giving the parties until March 4 to review the confidential information. In the remand results, Commerce continued to use respondent Nexco's acquisition costs as a proxy for the cost of production of beekeeper supplies (see 2310130049). The agency also struck by its decision to compare Nexco's U.S. sale prices with normal values based on Nexco's third-country sale prices to Germany on a monthly basis instead of a quarterly basis (Nexco v. U.S., CIT # 22-00203).
Three U.S. steel companies, Cleveland-Cliffs, Steel Dynamics and SSAB Enterprises, told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that Turkish exporter Habas failed to show that the Commerce Department's finding that Habas' Turkish lira price, and not the U.S. dollar price, controlled the amount owed by the exporter's customers at the time of payment was unsupported. Filing a reply brief on Feb. 26, the steel companies said Habas' arguments, which were "long on verbiage and obfuscation but short on specificity and clarity," only presumed the agency's finding to be wrong and did not actually show that it was (Habas Sinai ve Tibbi Gazlar Istihsal Endustrisi v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1158).
Iceland's Einar Gunnarsson, chair of the fisheries subsidies talks at the World Trade Organization, circulated a draft text on the second fisheries negotiations on Feb. 16, the WTO announced. The text covered subsidies contributing to overcapacity and overfishing and was released in the run-up to the 13th Ministerial Conference, which is set to be held Feb. 26-29.
DOJ last week announced a guilty plea and indictments as part of a scheme by Russians to illegally use U.S.-based companies to transfer and launder money.
The following lawsuit was filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department reversed its use of Descartes ocean freight data in various subsidy calculations on remand in a case on the 2021 countervailing duty review of crystalline silicon photovoltaic products from China. Instead of using an average of Descartes and Xeneta data, the agency said it decided to solely use the Xeneta in response to concerns raised by the Court of International Trade (Trina Solar (Changzhou) Science & Technology Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00219).
Solar cell maker Auxin Solar and solar module designer Concept Clean Energy responded to the U.S. motion to dismiss their suit challenging the Commerce Department's pause of antidumping and countervailing duties on solar cells and modules from Southeast Asian countries found to be circumventing the AD/CVD orders on these goods from China (see 2401230040) (Auxin Solar v. United States, CIT # 23-00274).
Anti-forced labor nonprofit International Rights Advocates said that it has standing to sue CBP over its inaction in responding to a petition alleging that cocoa from Cote d'Ivoire is made with forced child labor. Responding to the government's motion to dismiss (see 2312180058), International Rights Advocates said it suffered a concrete injury by being forced to divert "substantial resources" to "gather and submit additional and updated evidence of forced labor" following CBP's inaction on the petition (International Trade Advocates v. U.S., CIT # 23-00165).
Alexis Early, former partner at King & Spalding, has joined Jenner & Block as a partner in the Washington-based national security and crisis practice. Early's practice focuses on sanctions, trade and export controls, anti-money laundering, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and more, the firm said.