The Court of International Trade on March 21 rejected Dongtai Peak Honey’s challenge to its antidumping duty rate from the 2010-11 administrative review on honey from China (A-570-864). Peak Honey had been assigned the $2.63 per kilogram AD rate for the “China-wide entity” exporters who didn’t demonstrate independence from state control. Commerce had put Peak Honey in the China-wide entity because the company filed its response to an agency questionnaire on the company’s ownership structure after the applicable deadline, and only requested an extension two days after the deadline had passed. Consequently, Commerce had disregarded the questionnaire response as improperly filed. Peak Honey argued to the court that accuracy would be best served by accepting the questionnaire response even though it was late. But CIT said accuracy must be balanced with the burden on the agency of accepting a late response. In this case, Peak Honey’s submission was long and contained lots of new information, and Commerce was justified in rejecting it, said the court.

Supporters of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (MTB) and other pieces of trade legislation are continuing to push for renewal of the respective programs despite growing uncertainty for the entire raft of trade bills, said trade analysts and industry officials in recent days. The vocal opposition to the current iteration of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) among Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill and in labor and environmental advocacy circles jeopardizes the once common hope that TPA would provide a vehicle for those pieces of legislation, and proponents are now scrambling to find another option, said observers.

Exporters should remember to fill out the Automated Export System AESDirect conditional data fields (marked in blue) when filing because it is rare that an AES record contains only required data fields (marked in red). In most cases at least one conditional field is required. Most of the conditional fields are located in the Shipment Information and Add Commodity Line sections in AESDirect and AESPcLink, the Census Bureau said in a March 19 blog post. The following are the most common conditional fields in the two sections:

Companies have started to request permission to unload cargo destined for Vancouver at U.S. ports as the labor dispute and truck driver strike in the Canadian city continues, said CBP in a CSMS message. Truckers at Port Metro Vancouver have been on strike since Feb. 26, though there has been some progress toward resolving the dispute, said A.N. Deringer in a March 14 alert.

Google’s request to seal documents in a civil suit accusing Google of violating wiretap laws by scanning Gmail messages “demonstrate[s] hypocrisy at the company’s core,” said Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project Director John Simpson in a Tuesday blog post (http://bit.ly/1hgF3dd). “Google is in the business of gathering data and making it public, often when people want to keep it private,” Simpson said. Google has argued information in the case might reveal trade secrets, and thus certain documents should be sealed, he said. “I think the reason is just Google’s reflexive secrecy about everything it does,” he said. A number of media organizations have filed an amicus brief with U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, arguing First Amendment rights should require the disclosure of all legal proceedings in the case. Oral arguments will be held Thursday at the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif.

Google’s request to seal documents in a civil suit accusing Google of violating wiretap laws by scanning Gmail messages “demonstrate[s] hypocrisy at the company’s core,” said Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project Director John Simpson in a Tuesday blog post (http://bit.ly/1hgF3dd). “Google is in the business of gathering data and making it public, often when people want to keep it private,” Simpson said. Google has argued information in the case might reveal trade secrets, and thus certain documents should be sealed, he said. “I think the reason is just Google’s reflexive secrecy about everything it does,” he said. A number of media organizations have filed an amicus brief with U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, arguing First Amendment rights should require the disclosure of all legal proceedings in the case (WID Feb 20 p19). Oral arguments will be held Thursday at the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif.

The Court of International Trade on Feb. 25 again denied Best Key’s challenge to a CBP ruling revocation on its metallized yarn. Although it had dismissed the case in December, CIT reversed course on whether it could hear Best Key’s challenge. Contrary to its earlier decision, it found Best Key did not have to be a direct importer to file suit against the ruling revocation. This time, CIT heard Best Key's arguments related to CBP misconduct and the interpretation of tariff headings on metallized yarn. But the court was not convinced by Best Key’s evidence of misconduct, and found no clear error in CBP’s revocation of the rulings.

Recent high-profile data breaches have spurred the FTC and Congress to accentuate the need for heightened authority for the commission to regulate data security. One company is trying to take away that authority altogether.

The U.S. District Court in San Jose should make public all documents in a civil suit accusing Google of violating wiretap laws by scanning Gmail messages, said an amicus brief several media organizations filed Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1gHalJO). The organizations include Atlantic Media Co., National Public Radio, The New York Times Co., The Washington Post and Reuters. “Under the First Amendment and the federal common law, the press and the public have a presumptive right of access to court proceedings and documents,” the brief said. Google has argued that some of the information in the case would constitute trade secrets, the brief said. Google did not comment.

President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order establishing a deadline for the completion of the long-awaited International Trade Data System (ITDS) “single window” for filing trade information required by numerous government agencies, the White House said Feb. 19. The order (here) is meant to propel necessary data sharing agreements among the agencies and align ITDS with the timeline set for the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), former CBP officials said.