Doris Johnson Hines, an intellectual property lawyer, is about to become the newest administrative law judge at the International Trade Commission, according to a Feb. 23 ITC news release. She will begin work on Feb. 27. She currently is a partner at Finnegan and has "extensive experience in intellectual property litigation in both the public and private sectors leading teams in U.S. district courts, the USITC, and before arbitration panels," the announcement said.
U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC)
The U.S. International Trade Commission is a federal agency which is independent, nonpartisan and quasi-judicial. The ITC (also commonlty referred to as the USITC) provides trade analysis to the President and Congress. The Commission serves as a forum to adjudicate intellectual property and trade disputes. The USITC investigates and makes determinations in cases involving imports which injure U.S. industry, including antidumping and countervailing duty cases, or violate U.S. intellectual property rights, such as in Section 337 cases. It also maintains the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule. The USITC is headed by six Commissioners who are appointed by Congress.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports have been fruitless, and antidumping and countervailing duty laws also are inadequate to counter the wide variety of abuses from China -- industrial espionage, forced technology transfer, discrimination against foreign sales in China, as well as enormous subsidies. "It is time for the U.S. government, ideally working with allies, to craft and implement a new set of trade defense instruments," ITIF Founder Robert Atkinson wrote in a white paper released Nov. 21.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated June 7 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 International Trade Commission erred when it found that revocation of the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resin from Oman would lead to a continuation or recurrence of injury to the domestic PET resin industry within a foreseeable time, Omani exporter OCTAL argued. Filing a complaint at the Court of International Trade May 2, OCTAL argued that the ITC violated the law when it either ignored or failed to adequately address contrary evidence relating to whether the revocation of the orders would lead to injury to the U.S. industry (OCTAL Inc. v. United States, CIT #22-00135).
A World Trade Organization panel said the U.S. International Trade Commission made numerous errors as it laid the groundwork for a safeguard tariff on large residential washing machines and parts, a tariff that is still in place for entries above the quota. The tariff is currently 14% within the quota threshold for washers and 30% on parts and washers above the quota threshold.