Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who is retiring from Congress at year's end, told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that he was disappointed there were no trade items in the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science (CHIPS) Act. "But I’m ready to negotiate a grand bargain on trade in this lame-duck session," he said in a video address Oct. 17. Portman was scheduled to participate in a roundtable of former U.S. trade representatives but was traveling overseas on an official congressional trip.

An argument from apellees, including the Solar Energy Industries Association, in a Federal Circuit case that the safeguard statute implicitly limits the president to make "trade-liberalizing" measures relies on a "strained reading of the statutory contest," by placing undue emphasis on the fact that section 2254(b)(1)(B) lets the president find that the domestic industry "has made" a positive adjustment to import competition, the U.S. argued in an Oct. 17 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. This position "relies on an illusory distinction between complete and ongoing adjustment," the brief said (Solar Energy Industries Association v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1392).

The Commerce Department did not properly conduct its "primarily dedicated" analysis when it found that Nur Gemicilik ve Tic is a cross-owned input supplier of plaintiff Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret, Kaptan argued in an Oct. 11 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. The U.S.'s position that Nur is a cross-owned input supplier since scrap is used in the production of subject merchandise and all of Nur's scrap generation was sold to Kaptan, thus making it "primarily dedicated" to the downstream product, cuts against the words of the countervailing duty preamble and Commerce's own precedent, Kaptan said (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT #21-00565).

The Court of International Trade should stop the International Trade Commission from releasing a group of plaintiffs' business proprietary information (BPI) to its former counsel and his firm, Buchanan Ingersoll, given the former counsel's alleged "betrayal," the plaintiffs, led by Amsted Rail Co. (ARC), argued in an Oct. 14 complaint at the Court of International Trade. By not blocking the release of the BPI, the ITC is violating the Administrative Procedure Act and the plaintiffs' 5th Amendment due process rights, the brief said (Amsted Rail Co. v. United States International Trade Commission, CIT #22-00307).

The National Marine Fisheries Service illegally denied importer Southern Cross Seafood's application for preapproval to import Chilean sea bass, Southern Cross argued in an Oct. 12 complaint at the Court of International Trade. NMFS said it could not permit the imports given the lack of a Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources Convention (CAMLR) conservation measure for the area in the Atlantic Ocean north of Antarctica where the fish are harvested. Southern Cross argued that the Commission for the CAMLR does not prohibit fishing for the sea bass there in the absence of a conservation measure (Southern Cross Seafoods v. U.S., CIT #22-00299).

The Court of International Trade must dismiss a case accusing the importer and U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese manufacturing company, Wanxiang America Corp., of negligence by making false statements and omissions on its entries of wheel hub assemblies, radial ball and tapered roller bearings, and universal joints and their parts, WXA argued in an Oct. 12 motion.

The Commerce Department decided to grant Universal Tube and Plastic Industries a level of trade adjustment in an antidumping duty review on remand at the Court of International Trade. Submitting its redetermination on Oct. 13, Commerce found Universal made its home market sales at two LOTs, though it continued to deny Universal a constructed export price offset. The result was a weighted-average dumping margin of 1.18% for Universal (Universal Tube and Plastic Indus. v. United States, CIT #20-03944).

The Commerce Department must reconsider or further explain its decision not to investigate off-peak electricity provided for less than adequate remuneration, the Court of International Trade held in an Oct. 5 opinion made public Oct.12. Judge Mark Barnett also sent back Commerce's failure to attribute subsidies to a respondent that had been given to the respondent's affiliate in connection with the purchase of steel scrap and a fixed asset. However, Barnett did uphold the agency's decision not to attribute the affiliate's subsidies in connection with the provision of services, raw materials and other fixed assets.

The Court of International Trade in an Oct. 12 confidential opinion remanded the Commerce Department's final determination in the countervailing duty investigation on forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany. In a text-only order, Judge Claire Kelly ordered Commerce to reconsider its position that the KAV program -- a concession fee ordinance program for public transport routes -- is a specific subsidy, and its rate calculations for the Electricity Tax Act and the Energy Tax Act. Kelly, in a letter to litigants, gave parties to the case until Oct. 19 to review the confidential information in the opinion (BGH Edelstahl Siegen v. United States, CIT #21-00080).