The Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling that allowed six individuals from Mali to sue two major food companies, Nestle USA and Cargill, Inc., over the claim that they had been trafficked as child slaves to cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast that provide cocoa to the companies. In a June 17 opinion, SCOTUS found that since the individuals' injuries occurred overseas and that Nestle and Cargill were only accused of "general corporate activity," the case was an "impermissible extraterritorial application of the Alien Tort Statute."

No serious gaps in the record exist proving that plywood producer Shelter Forest did not develop its plywood after the Commerce Department issued antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood products from China, the Department of Justice said in a brief June 16. Contradicting comments on Commerce's remand results from petitioner Coalition for Fair Trade in Hardwood Plywood, DOJ backed Commerce's remand decision to reverse its affirmative determination that Shelter Forest's plywood circumvented the AD/CV duties.

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping administrative review of an antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel standard pipe and tube products from Turkey, dropping any adjustments to the sales-below-cost test it made after finding a particular market situation, in a one-page June 16 decision.

A Court of International Trade decision eliminating the extension of Section 232 duties to steel and aluminum "derivatives" has formally been appealed by the U.S. to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, according to a June 17 docketing notice. The CIT ruling, decided by a three-judge panel at the trade court, found that President Donald Trump violated statutory time limits when expanding the tariffs to the derivative products. Importer PrimeSource Building Products successfully argued that the tariff expansion was announced well after the 105-day deadline for tariff action following the initial Commerce Department report that led to the initial imposition of the Section 232 duties in 2018 (see 2104050049) (PrimeSource Building Products, Inc. v. United States, Federal Circuit, #21-2066).

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

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a June 13 opinion rejected Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska's challenge to his sanctions listing, granting the Office of Foreign Assets Control's motion for summary judgment. Deripaska, who argued his listing as part of the wave of sanctions in the wake of Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 violated multiple procedural and constitutional rights. Deripaska claimed that OFAC violated his Fifth Amendment due process rights by “relying on undisclosed classified information and failing to provide him with adequately detailed unclassified summaries of that information.” Deripaska is a “non-resident alien who lacks sufficient contact with the United States” to bring a due process challenge, Judge Amit Mehta said. Mehta said that “even if the court were to consider Deripaska’s due process claim on the merits, it would reject it” because the International Emergency Economic Powers Act explicitly says that OFAC can rely on classified information in its determinations.

Russian and Swiss exporters Novolipetsk Steel Public Joint Stock Co. and NOVEX Trading (Swiss) SA will appeal an April 13 Court of International Trade decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a June 14 notice of appeal said. The appeal comes after the exporters lost their challenge to the final determination in the 2017-18 antidumping administrative review of certain hot-rolled flat-rolled carbon-quality steel products from Russia. Judge Claire Kelly dismissed the plaintiffs' claims, saying they lacked standing because they had no entries during the period of review and didn't contend they were resellers of the subject merchandise (Novolipetsk Steel Public Joint Stock Co. et al. v. U.S., CIT #20-00031).

Dominican aluminum extrusion manufacturer Kingtom Aluminio SRL should not be allowed to intervene in a Court of International Trade case in which it is alleged to be involved in a transshipment scheme to avoid antidumping duties, the Enforce and Protect Act case alleger Ta Chen International said in a June 16 brief. Although it made the covered merchandise, Kingtom did not import it through evasion, Ta Chen said.

The Commerce Department will move the date of imposition of antidumping and countervailing duties on a subset of steel trailer wheels from China to the date of publication of the final determination in the investigation, rather than the date of the preliminary determination, it said a pair of remand results filed June 14. The Court of International Trade told Commerce May 18 to make the switch, finding that the agency did not provide proper notice of a scope change during the proceeding (see 2105180062). In two filings, one for the antidumping case and one for the countervailing duty case, Commerce said that it intends to issue instructions to CBP to exclude plaintiffs Trans Texas Tire and Zhejiang Jingu Co.'s entries of physical vapor deposition (PVD) chrome wheels entered between Feb. 25, 2019, and June 24, 2019, from the scope of the investigation (Trans Texas Tire, LLC v. United States, CIT #19-00188-00189).

The Commerce Department will reconsider its decision to reallocate the cost of production for antidumping administrative review respondent Nexteel Co.'s non-prime products to account for their losses when calculating constructed value, the Court of International Trade said in a June 7 ruling made public on June 15. Issuing her second remand in the case brought from steel producers Husteel Co. and Nexteel over the 2016-17 AD administrative review of welded line pipe from Korea, Judge Claire Kelly sustained all other determinations made by Commerce.