The U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska allowed logistics company Lineage Logistics Holding to file a second amicus brief in a case over Jones Act penalties in light of the U.S.'s motion to dissolve the injunction that bars CBP from issuing new Jones Act penalties. Lineage Logistics filed the brief to back plaintiffs Kloosterboer International Forwarding (KIF) and Alaska Reefer Management (ARM) in opposing the move, arguing that the grounds for the injunction remain in place in that the government has yet to comply with the law to provide adequate notice and comment related to its treatment of the Bayside Canadian Rail line for the purposes of granting an exception to the Jones Act (Kloosterboer International Forwarding v. United States, D. Alaska # 3:21-00198).

The U.S., in an amended complaint, continues to fail to show that importer Crown Cork & Seal (CCS) committed fraud or gross negligence over misclassified metal lid imports, the importer argued in a June 22 motion to dismiss at the Court of International Trade. Seeking again to have the trade court toss the U.S.'s first two counts in the case, CCS said the amended complaint doesn't provide any new facts that can revive the two counts which Judge M. Miller Baker already dismissed (U.S. v. Crown Cork & Seal, CIT #21-00361).

Richard Boncy, a businessman and former Haitian ambassador-at-large charged in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bribery scheme, moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that the U.S. destroyed potentially exculpatory evidence. Filing the motion in the Massachusetts U.S. District Court, Boncy, joined by co-defendant and Haitian-American businessman Joseph Baptiste, said that the government's move to destroy the evidence -- a disk allegedly containing recordings of two calls with an undercover FBI agent -- "severely abrogates Mr. Boncy's constitutional rights" (United States v. Roger Richard Boncy, D. Mass. #17-10305).

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has 32 extra days, until Aug. 1, to file its lists 3 and 4A tariff remand results in the Section 301 litigation, a three-judge panel at the Court of International Trade said in a June 22 order. DOJ, on USTR’s behalf, asked for a 60-day extension to Aug. 30 to fix its Administrative Procedure Act violations, citing the volume of work required to meet the remand order, plus the agency’s limited staff resources and the additional projects compounding its workload (see 2206210042).

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The Court of International Trade in a June 17 opinion denied exporter Shanghai Tainai Bearing's and importer C&U Americas' bid for an injunction against cash deposits at the antidumping duty rate decided in the 2019-20 review of the AD order on tapered roller bearings from China. Judge Stephen Vaden said that the plaintiffs failed to establish a likelihood to succeed on the merits or suffer irreparable harm and that the balance of equities and public interest favored the U.S. government.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative can’t demonstrate good cause for a Section 301 remand deadline extension “that would leave uncured its established legal violation for another two months to the continuing detriment of American businesses and consumers,” Akin Gump lawyers for Section 301 litigation test plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products said in an opposition brief June 21 at the Court of International Trade in docket 1:21-cv-00052.

The Commerce Department properly used the expected method to determine the non-selected respondent's rate in an antidumping duty review of steel nails from Taiwan, the Court of International Trade said in a June 16 opinion. Judge Mark Barnett ruled that the burden was on the plaintiffs, led by PrimeSource Building Products, to establish that the expected method -- the practice of averaging adverse facts available rates in the absence of non-AFA, zero or de minimis margins -- should not be used. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs gave no evidence to back their claim that the expected method was not reasonably reflective of their actual margins.

With less than two weeks to spare before the June 30 deadline for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to file its remand results in the Section 301 litigation, the agency needs a 60-day extension to Aug. 29 due to the volume of work involved, the agency’s limited staff resources and other projects that are compounding its workload, DOJ said June 17 at the Court of International Trade. Akin Gump lawyers for test-case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products oppose the motion and soon will file a response, DOJ said. Matthew Nicely, Akin Gump’s lead attorney, declined to comment June 17.

The Court of International Trade in a June 15 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's final determination in the 2019 antidumping duty investigation on wood mouldings and millwork products from Brazil. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ruled that Commerce properly combined the three mandatory respondents -- Araupel, Braslumber Industria de Molduras and BrasPine Madeiras -- into a single entity and correctly didn't apply the major input rule to certain log purchases. Commerce was also right to revise Araupel's general and administrative expenses to account for fair value adjustments associated with the annual revaluation of standing trees in the company's unharvested forests, the court said. The result is a zero percent dumping margin for the collapsed entity.