The FCC should give price-cap telcos broad relief from USF obligations to provide high-cost voice and Lifeline service in many areas, said AT&T, CenturyLink and USTelecom in filings in docket 09-197 in response to a public notice asking parties to refresh the record. AT&T denied the record needed refreshing and urged the commission to focus on giving relief to price-cap carriers, which are generally larger than rate-of-return carriers. USTelecom urged the FCC to grant its petition and other ILEC requests to eliminate USF eligible telecom carrier (ETC) service obligations where price-cap carriers receive no high-cost support and to de-link Lifeline from ETC designations. CenturyLink said the commission should address ETC obligations to offer voice in extremely high-cost areas and clarify that price cap carriers don’t have such duties in areas outside their actual incumbent wireline service areas.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Sept. 8-11 in case they were missed.
A coalition of domestic furniture manufacturers recently submitted a request that the Commerce Department clarify that occasional chests are exempt from antidumping duties on wooden bedroom furniture from China. In its Aug. 24 request for a changed circumstances review, the American Manufacturers Committee for Legal Trade asks that Commerce insert language into the scope to resolve confusion over what qualifies as an exempt occasional chest, including two sets of detailed dimensional criteria.
CBP properly liquidated entries subject to antidumping duties within the required timeframe, which began when the Commerce Department issued liquidation instructions and not when it published a Federal Register notice of a court decision, CBP said in a June 24 internal advice ruling (here). CBP ruled in HQ H258962 that Alltrade, which imported pry bar sets from China, was wrong in its assertion that the six month liquidation timeline began with the Federal Register notice announcing the court decision to the public, called a Timken Notice.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Aug 31 - Sept. 6:
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) recently enacted a new law loosening the state’s tough requirements for labeling products sold in the state as “Made in the U.S.A,” said his office in a list of recently signed legislation (here). S.B. 633 (here) amends Section 17533.7 of the California Business and Professions Code to allow for “Made in the U.S.A.” labeling if less than 5 percent of an article’s value is from foreign components, or if less than 10 percent of the value is foreign and the components are not available in the U.S.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Aug 24-30:
NTCA plans to file an amicus brief in support of Great Lakes Comnet's challenge to an FCC order that sided with AT&T in an access charge dispute, the rural telco trade group told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Monday. The brief is due Wednesday, an attorney told us Tuesday. NTCA said it had received consent from all the parties in the case to file the brief, which will be limited to the FCC's interpretation of "rural CLEC" and "competing ILEC." Great Lakes Comnet and its subsidiary Westphalia Telephone Co. argued in their brief that there were six reasons for overturning the FCC March 18 order that found GLC had billed AT&T for interstate access services under a tariff that violated its CLEC "benchmark" tariff rules (see 1508190065). GLC/WTC said even if GLC were a CLEC, which they disputed, the commission should have found the company was exempt from the benchmark rate regulations as a "rural CLEC." They also said the agency erred in finding GLC violated its rules by exceeding the rates of the "competing ILEC" because it erroneously identified that ILEC as AT&T Michigan. The case is Great Lakes Comnet v. FCC, No. 15-1064.
No lawsuits are listed in the court's PACER database as having been filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Aug 17-23:
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Aug. 17-21 in case they were missed.