World Trade Organization members reached a consensus July 28 on the 14 new heads of the subsidiary bodies that report to the Council for Trade in Goods. The General Council chair, Ambassador Dacio Castillo of Honduras, added that he will host consultations on how to "improve the overall process for the appointment of officers of all WTO bodies," according to an accompanying press release. The chairpersons are as follows:
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ordered Hobby Lobby to forfeit a cuneiform tablet engraved with a portion of the epic of Gilgamesh, the Justice Department announced July 27. Hobby Lobby bought the tablet, dubbed the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet and originating in what is now Iraq, from an international auction house for display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. Law enforcement seized the tablet in September 2019, as it was alleged to have been illegally brought into the U.S. An antiques dealer and a U.S. cuneiform export shipped it by international post without declaring the contents, the release said. “Forfeiture of the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet demonstrates the Department’s continued commitment to eliminating smuggled cultural property from the U.S. art market,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Thwarting trade in smuggled goods by seizing and forfeiting an ancient artifact shows the department’s dedication to using all available tools, including forfeiture, to ensure justice.”
The following are short summaries of recent CBP “NY” rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The following are short summaries of recent CBP “NY” rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
A European Union request for dispute consultations with Russia in the World Trade Organization over an alleged Russian import substitution program was circulated to members July 26. The substitution program includes three measures to favor Russian state-owned enterprises and businesses over imported goods: price preferencing favoring Russian-origin products in government procurement practices, requirements to obtain prior authorization for the purchase of certain engineering products, and minimum quotas for Russian-origin products in the procurement policies of SOEs. “The EU claims the measures relating to the activities of certain state-related entities, and laws and regulations regulating these activities, are inconsistent with various provisions under the WTO's General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994, the General Agreement on Trade in Services, and Russia's Protocol of Accession to the WTO,” a notice on the dispute consultations said.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated July 23 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
Greenlight Organic accused the U.S. government of invoking various "evasive tactics" in avoiding providing sufficient answers to the company's requests for admissions (RFAs) in a Court of International Trade case over the importer's alleged misclassification of imports to skirt duties. In a July 23 motion to compel the U.S. to respond to Greenlight's 116 RFAs, the importer wants the court to force the government to issue responses and overturn its objections that the requests were "incoherent and prevented a meaningful response" (United States v. Greenlight Organic, Inc. et al., CIT #17-00031).
The Commerce Department was wrong to "jettison" its prior regulations in not adjusting for the indirect reimbursement for antidumping duties paid in an administrative review on hot-rolled steel flat products from Australia, the U.S. Steel Corporation said in a July 13 reply brief. Responding to arguments made by Commerce and defendant-intervenor BlueScope Steel, U.S. Steel argued that the scope of Commerce's reimbursement regulation includes both direct and indirect reimbursement, which runs counter to Commerce's decision to not adjust for indirect reimbursement.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated July 22 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The Commerce Department wants another shot to consider the Section 232 tariff exclusion requests filed by Allegheny Technologies Incorporated after the agency initially rejected them. In a July 21 motion for voluntary remand in the Court of International Trade, Commerce said that in light of a recent CIT decision, JSW Steel, Inc. v. United States, which found that Commerce's exclusion request denials were "devoid of explanation and frustrate judicial review," the agency needs to take another look at its denials (Allegheny Technologies Incoporated et al. v. United States, CIT #20-03923).