Joseph Maher, former acting general counsel of DHS, has joined Nixon Peabody as partner in the national security and resilience practice, the law firm announced. Maher worked at DHS for over 21 years, where he advised "on all legal aspects of the department’s security and enforcement operations," the firm said.
Jacob Kopnick
Jacob Kopnick, Associate Editor, is a reporter for Trade Law Daily and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and International Trade Today. He joined the Warren Communications News team in early 2021 covering a wide range of topics including trade-related court cases and export issues in Europe and Asia. Jacob's background is in trade policy, having spent time with both CSIS and USTR researching international trade and its complexities. Jacob is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Public Policy.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 4 sustained the Commerce Department's decision that Australian exporter BlueScope Steel (AIS) didn't reimburse its affiliated U.S. importer, BlueScope Steel Americas, for antidumping duties. Judges Kimberly Moore, Todd Hughes and Leonard Stark echoed the Court of International Trade in finding that it would have been "unreasonable" for the exporter to include the AD in the price charged to the importer because the "exporter itself was not responsible for those duties."
The Court of International Trade on April 1 granted the New Zealand government's motion to dissolve a preliminary injunction banning its fish exports in a challenge to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2020 findings that New Zealand's standards for its West Coast North Island inshore trawl and set net fisheries were comparable to U.S. regulations.
Paulo Perez-Mendoza of Stockton, California, was charged March 28 with conspiracy to "receive and sell smuggled pesticides" into the U.S., the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California announced.
The U.S. brought a customs penalty suit against importer E-Dong U.S.A. for failure to pay federal excise tax on entries of soju bottles from South Korea. Filing a complaint March 28 at the Court of International Trade, the government said that the company entered the soju, a Korean spirit, via "material or false statement" by failing to reference any of the owed excise tax (U.S. v. E-Dong, U.S.A., CIT # 24-00066).
The Commerce Department last week issued new antidumping and countervailing duty regulations, which, most notably, lifted the prohibition on the consideration of transnational subsidies in CVD cases (see 2403210070).
The International Trade Commission is proposing to permanently adopt its COVID-19 era regulation that waived the need for paper filings of confidential and public documents in safeguard, antidumping and countervailing duty, and Section 337 proceedings. In a proposed rule released March 28, the ITC, at the request of the ITC Trial Lawyers Association and the Customs and International Trade Bar Association, proposed eliminating the requirement for paper copy submissions, except for complaints and complaint supplements and amendments in Section 337 cases. The regulation also removes "gender-specific language" found in the ITC's rules.
China opened a case at the World Trade Organization against the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act's rules for electric vehicle subsidies and "other measures," the nation's Ministry of Commerce announced March 26, according to an unofficial translation.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of March 18-24:
The Commerce Department released the final version of regulations on March 22 that will make various key changes in the administration of antidumping and countervailing duty regulations. The changes take effect April 24.