Changi Esquel Textile (CJE), a Hong Kong-based apparel company and part of the Esquel group of companies, filed for a preliminary injunction on July 19 against its placement on the Commerce Department's Entity List. The company is seeking the injunction even though it expects an announcement soon on potential changes to its status on the list, it said. "The government has informed Plaintiffs that there will likely be a development regarding CJE’s continued Entity List designation by August 1," the company said.
Forced Labor
CBP is the primary U.S. agency tasked with combating forced labor in international trade. It is the only agency with legal authority to take enforcement action and prevent entry into domestic commerce of goods produced with forced labor. CBP combats forced labor by issuing Withhold Release Orders (WROs) and Findings, and enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), and Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). Goods subject to WROs and Findings, UFLPA, and CAATSA status cannot be entered at any ports of the U.S.
The Commerce Department swapped the surrogate labor data it used to calculate normal value in an antidumping investigation after it reconsidered evidence showing signs of forced labor in Malaysia's electrical and electronics [E&E] sector, according to July 8 remand results filed in the Court of International Trade. Finding that this forced labor unfairly skewed the labor costs for consideration as surrogate data, Commerce instead opted to use International Labor Comparisons data for Mexico in 2016 to determine the surrogate labor value (New American Keg v. United States, CIT #20-00008).
Changji Esquel Textile (CJE), a Hong Kong-based apparel company and part of the Esquel group of companies, filed a July 6 lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to have its placement on the Commerce Department's Entity List dropped (Changji Esquel Textile Co. Ltd. et al. v. Gina M. Raimondo et al., D.C. Cir. #21-01798). The Trump administration put CJE on the list last year for alleged practices of using forced labor from the Muslim Uyghur minority population in China's Xinjiang region.
Cynthia Whittenburg, who retired as CBP deputy executive assistant commissioner in the Office of Trade earlier this year (see 2102090059), joined the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America Educational Institute (NEI) as an associate director, the trade association said in an emailed July 6 news release. Whittenburg will “assist in expanding the delivery of our content though institutions of higher learning as well as other appropriate avenues as well as assist in the development of additional courses needed to continue our mission,” NEI Executive Director Kiko Zuniga said. “Some of these courses will deal with current issues such as forced labor, USMCA, to name a few.” While at CBP, Whittenburg helped in examining the need for continuing education requirements for customs brokers (see 1910160056), an issue that CBP is still working on and that the NEI is following closely (see 2105040004).
Trade Law Daily is providing readers with some recent top stories. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Trade Law Daily is providing readers with some recent top stories. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Top trade officials from Europe, Japan and North America emphasized problematic economic behavior in China, without mentioning the world's second-largest economy by name, at the end of the G-7 meeting of trade ministers.
CBP pulled down two recent rulings from its website that detailed the agency's detention of shipments imported by Uniqlo over suspected use of cotton from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps in China. A May 10 ruling said that Uniqlo was unable to prove XPCC wasn't used (see 2105130031), while a May 18 ruling said that some products within another detained shipment could be released because they weren't made of cotton (see 2105200039). The link to each ruling now says the ruling document “is not available.” CBP didn't comment.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated May 20 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):
CBP allowed for the release of some styles of men's shirts imported by Uniqlo that were detained over the suspected use of cotton from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps in China because the shirts were not made of cotton, the agency said in a May 18 ruling. The ruling, HQ H318835, discloses that CBP detained a second Uniqlo shipment over a possible XPCC connection. The first detention was mentioned in another recent ruling, in which CBP said Uniqlo hadn't sufficiently shown XPCC cotton wasn't used (see 2105130031). The ruling wasn't available on the CBP rulings database as of press time May 20.