Aman Kakar, an international trade lawyer, has left his associate position at ArentFox to work as corporate counsel for global trade for Amazon, particularly for Amazon Web Services, according to Kakar's LinkedIn page. Kakar moved to terminate his access to business proprietary information in five cases at the Court of International Trade, indicating his departure from ArentFox. Kakar worked at the firm for six years, previously serving as a staff attorney at the Commerce Department.
The Commerce Department stuck by its decision to issue questionnaires in lieu of on-site verification due to the COVID-19-related travel restrictions in 2020 following an order from the Court of International Trade to either conduct verification virtually or further explain its original decision. The agency in June 30 remand results said that the plaintiffs, led by Bonney Forge, raised the issue of conducting a virtual verification too late and that mandatory respondent Shakti Forge Industries' questionnaire responses provide a "reasonable alternative" to on-site or remote verification (Bonney Forge Corporation v. United States, CIT #20-03837).
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The Court of International Trade in a June 9 opinion made public July 1 sent back parts and upheld parts of the Commerce Department's final determination in the antidumping duty investigation on biodiesel from Indonesia. Judge Richard Eaton said that Commerce's decision to rely on constructed value based on particular market situation findings for home market sales made through Indonesia's Public Service Obligation program was valid, but that the reliance on CV for non-program sales needed to be further explained. The judge also held that the agency had to further explain its legal authority to make a CV adjustment to account for Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) -- tradeable credits issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Court of International Trade in a July 6 opinion upheld the Commerce Department's decision to grant a level-of-trade (LOT) adjustment for antidumping duty respondent Productos Laminados de Monterrey's (Prolamsa) heavy walled rectangular carbon welded steel pipes and tubes from Mexico. Judge Timothy Stanceu sustained the LOT adjustment which Commerce made following the judge's initial remand order. The court ruled that petitioner Nucor Corp.'s arguments that the higher selling expenses for one avenue of Prolamsa's trade were due to higher manufacturing costs and not higher selling expenses were "entirely speculative, if not illogical."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a July 1 order dismissed antidumping duty petitioner Wheatland Tube's appeal of the Commerce Department's final results in the administrative review of the antidumping duty order on circular welded pipe from Turkey, granting the company's unopposed motion to toss the case. Wheatland filed the appeal to contest the Court of International Trade's ruling that Commerce couldn't make a particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test. After the Federal Circuit issued its judgment in the key Hyundai Steel case, plaintiff Borusan Mannesmann moved for affirmance on the issue. Wheatland then moved to toss the case, stating that Hyundai Steel "controls the issues" in the present appeal (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-2097).
The Court of International Trade in a July 1 order granted the U.S.'s motion for entry of confession of judgment in a customs case on imported hardwood plywood from Richmond International Forest Products (RIFP). In all, Richmond filed four cases over 60 entries of hardwood plywood, which CBP classified as of Chinese-origin, assessing antidumping, countervailing and Section 301 duties, along with a merchandise processing fee. RIFP argued that the plywood is from Cambodia, filing a series of protests that CBP denied (Richmond International Forest Products Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00178).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a July 1 order denied three Mexican tomato exporters' bid for a panel rehearing and rehearing en banc in a case challenging the termination of an antidumping duty suspension agreement. Judges Kimberly Moore, Pauline Newman, Alan Lourie, Timothy Dyk, Sharon Prost, Richard Taranto, Raymond Chen, Todd Hughes, Kara Stoll, Tiffany Cunningham and Leonard Stark denied the petition from Agricola La Primaveria, Bioparques de Occidente and Kaliroy Fresh, while Judge Jimmie Reyna did not participate (Bioparques de Occidente v. United States, Fed. Cir. #20-2265, -2266, -2267).
The Court of International Trade in a June 30 opinion upheld the Labor Department's decision to deny a group of former AT&T call center workers trade adjustment assistance, ruling that the department "(finally) gets it right," following two previous remand orders. Judge M. Miller Baker ruled that Labor adequately explained the evidence it relied on, asserting that the department appropriately relied on certified information to declare that the company did not offshore the plaintiffs' call center jobs.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit owes no deference to CBP's procedures in an antidumping and countervailing duty evasion investigation since those procedures violated importer Royal Brush Manufacturing's due process rights, the importer argued in a June 30 reply brief. Royal Brush also argued that CBP's decision to not give the importer access to business confidential information in the Enforce and Protect Act proceeding is a problem of CBP's own creation, and that the U.S. offers insufficient defenses of the company's constitutional due process claims (Royal Brush Manufacturing Inc. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #22-1226).