Exporters shouldn’t assume that the AUKUS initiative between Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. will continue in its current form, even though the Trump administration has made mostly positive comments about the agreement, said Charles Edel, the Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
U.S. arguments that spectrum licenses don't confer property rights protected by the Fifth Amendment undermine wireless providers' reliance on those licenses and could chill investment, according to USTelecom. In an amicus brief filed this week with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (docket 25-1792), USTelecom said that if spectrum licenses don't confer any protected property right, a federal agency could unilaterally override a wireless provider's right to use spectrum without triggering a right to compensation. The same goes for other authorized use of public assets, including federal lands, it said. "That theory is breathtakingly broad -- and it cannot be right."
The Commerce Department improperly found that the plain language of the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on chassis and subassemblies thereof from China cover Vietnamese chassis with Chinese-origin components, the Court of International Trade held on Oct. 8. Judge Claire Kelly said the orders "contain multiple ambiguities," including "when components are included within the scope of the Orders," when third-country operations exclude the individual components from the orders, and the meaning of "subassemblies ... whether ... assembled or unassembled."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Oct. 8 held that the Commerce Department's "cross-ownership regulation" turns on whether the purpose of the subsidy provided to a cross-owned input provider "is to benefit the production of both the input and downstream products." In clarifying how the regulation is to be applied, Judges Jimmie Reyna, William Bryson and Kara Stoll held that the Court of International Trade was right to reject Commerce's application of this regulation to countervailing duty respondent Gujarat Fluorochemicals in the countervailing duty investigation on polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) resin from India.
The Court of International Trade on Oct. 8 remanded a Commerce Department scope ruling that importer Pitts Enterprises' chassis from Vietnam containing Chinese-origin axle and landing gear components fall under the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on chassis and subassemblies thereof from China. Judge Claire Kelly held that Commerce must adopt the "plain meaning of the word 'entered'" in the AD/CVD orders, "namely 'entered into the United States.'" Kelly also rejected the agency's claim that the plain meaning of the orders covers Chinese-origin parts that enter the U.S. as part of a chassis. She found that the orders are ambiguous as to "when components are included within the scope of the Orders." They're also unclear on when third country operations remove these parts from the orders, as well as on the meaning of "subassemblies ... whether ... assembled or unassembled." Lastly, the judge told Commerce to reconsider its decision to impose AD/CVD on the "entire value of the imported chassis" rather than just on the Chinese-origin parts.
There is a directive from President Donald Trump to quickly land deals in steel, aluminum and energy, according to Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who spoke to Canadian reporters in the late afternoon Oct. 7, after a White House visit accompanying Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The Commerce Department properly decided on remand not to countervail an exemption from Turkey's Banking and Insurance Transactions Tax on foreign exchange transactions, the Court of International Trade held in an Oct. 6 decision. In upholding the 2023 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey, Judge Gary Katzmann also sustained Commerce's decision to use a report from Colliers International as the benchmark for valuing the rent-free lease of land to respondent Kaptan's affiliate Nur over a report from Cushman & Wakefield.
Court of International Trade Judge Gary Katzmann remanded Oct. 6 parts of the Commerce Department’s 2021 review of the countervailing duty order on steel rebar from Turkey, asking the department to rework its application of adverse facts available to Kaptan Demir’s use of a social security benefits law, Turkish Law 27256. He agreed the department had based its decision solely on information it had declined to add to the record.
The Court of International on Oct. 6 sustained the Commerce Department's 2023 review of the countervailing duty order on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey. Following a remand on the agency's de jure specificity finding of an exemption from Turkey's Banking and Insurance Transactions Tax on foreign exchange transactions and its selection of a report from Colliers international to use as the benchmark to value rent-free lease of land to respondent Kaptan's affiliate, Judge Gary Katzmann upheld Commerce's decisions not to countervail the tax exemption but to stick with the Colliers report. Regarding the specificity determination, Katzmann said he already rejected the claims that the tax exemption was de jure specific, adding that the agency operated within its discretion in not engaging in more of a de facto specificity investigation or using adverse facts available given the Turkish government's failure to provide requested information on remand.
Quintillion plans to build new branches of its subsea cable system off a new extension stretching from Nome, Alaska, to other locations in the state. In an FCC application Tuesday to modify its existing cable landing license, Quintillion said the new branches would provide fiber-optic infrastructure to communities in its service region, giving them "a diverse, resilient, low latency, competitive pathway to U.S. and global interconnectivity and cloud services."