A Trade Enforcement Task Force within CBP's Office of Trade will allow the agency to better focus on antidumping and countervailing duty evasion and stopping products manufactured using forced labor, said CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske during a conference held by metal trade associations on May 2 (here). "The task force will allow us to more aggressively enforce the approximately 270 AD/CVD orders on steel, alloy, and other metal products -- 150 on steel products alone," he said at the joint meeting of the American Iron and Steel Institute and the Metals Service Center Institute. "The CBP task force will harness the agency’s collective trade enforcement expertise as a focal point for coordination with other government agency partners," said the agency in a separate news release (here).
TUCSON, Ariz. -- Implementation of new trade enforcement provisions of recently passed customs reauthorization legislation will not result in an overall increase in cargo exams, said CBP officials speaking April 19 at the annual conference of the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America. Though CBP is focused on creating its new Trade Law Enforcement Division tasked with issuing trade alerts (see 1602230080), as well as implementing new programs to apply risk assessments (see 1602170074), the agency’s overall goal is better targeted exams, not more of them, they said.
An interagency task force provided the Obama administration a list of recommendations to tackle illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, the task force said in notice issued Dec. 17 (here). The recommendations were requested in a memorandum issued by President Obama in June (see 14061726). The memo established a Presidential Task Force on combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Seafood Fraud, co-chaired by the Departments of State and Commerce, and including 12 other agencies, including the Departments of Homeland Security, Agriculture, and Justice and the U.S. Trade Representative. The task force is asking for comments on the recommendations by Jan. 20 and plans to release an action plan in early 2015, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The International Trade Commission voted on June 6 to begin a Section 337 investigation into patent infringement by imports of toner cartridges for laser printers. Canon requested the investigation in May, alleging Ninestar, Aster, Print-Rite, International Laser Group, and ASTA, all of China, are manufacturing unauthorized toner cartridges for use in certain Canon and Hewlett-Packard laser printers (see 14051228). The toner cartridges are being sold by 15 retailers in the United States, it said. Canon is requesting a general exclusion order and cease and desist orders banning importation and sale of infringing cartridges. The foreign-based respondents to the investigation include the following:
The International Trade Commission is asking for comments by May 21 on public interest factors raised by Canon’s request for a ban on imports of unauthorized laser printer toner cartridges that it says infringe its patents. Canon’s May 7 Section 337 complaint says Ninestar, Aster, Print-Rite, International Laser Group, and ASTA, all of China, are manufacturing unauthorized toner cartridges for use in certain Canon and Hewlett-Packard laser printers. The toner cartridges are being sold by 15 retailers in the U.S., it said. Canon is asking for a cease and desist order banning sale of the unauthorized toner cartridges. It is also asking for a general exclusion order banning imports of all infringing toner cartridges, or alternatively limited exclusion orders banning imports of ingraining cartridges by each respondent.
Canon filed a Section 337 complaint May 7 asking that the International Trade Commission ban imports of unauthorized toner cartridges from China that it says infringe its patents. Canon says the Ninestar, Aster, Print-Rite, International Laser Group, and ASTA, all of China, are manufacturing unauthorized toner cartridges for use in certain Canon and Hewlett-Packard laser printers. The toner cartridges are being sold by 15 retailers in the United States, it said. Canon is asking for a cease and desist order banning sale of the unauthorized toner cartridges. It is also asking for a general exclusion order banning imports of all infringing toner cartridges, or alternatively limited exclusion orders banning imports of ingraining cartridges by each respondent.
The customs brokers have been and will continue to be a necessary part of CBP's trade mission, but coming regulatory changes may require some "reinvention" within the industry, said Al Gina, a former head of CBP's Office of International Trade. Similarly, CBP made some major adjustments during Gina's time there due to new budgetary constraints, an issue that continues to loom over CBP as it works to develop both long and short-term initiatives, he said. Gina, who recently retired from the agency and is now a partner at CT Strategies (see 13111217), discussed a number of agency initiatives and his new work during a wide-ranging interview on Jan. 9.
While the decision to rescind General System of Preferences (GSP) status for Bangladesh is considered to be largely symbolic, the change is expected to reverberate among the U.S. business community, observers say. Although individual U.S. interests vary depending on scope and scale of specific relationships with Bangladeshi manufacturers, some U.S. importers will likely be forced to foster different manufacturing sources in the coming months. The United States Trade Representative (USTR) decided in late June to rescind GSP status for the South Asian nation (see 13062820) following a series of labor disasters in Bangladesh over the past year, culminating in the April 24 Rana Plaza factory fire that claimed nearly 1,200 lives
Ninestar Technology filed a petition for Supreme Court hearing on whether it must pay more than $11 million in penalties for violating an exclusion order and cease and desist orders issued in an International Trade Commission patent investigation of ink cartridge imports. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the penalties in February. Ninestar had argued that sale in any country satisfies the “first sale rule,” so its sale of the ink cartridges in China exhaust any U.S. patent claims in a Section 337 proceeding. The company also argued that administrative bodies, such as the ITC, cannot issue punitive penalties for violation of an administrative order. Such a large penalty could only be ordered by an Article III court after a fair trial, it said.
The International Trade Commission modified the general exclusion order and a cease and desist order to cover components of ink cartridges in a patent proceeding on certain ink cartridges and components thereof (337-TA-565), based on a settlement agreement reached between complainant Epson and respondent Ninestar.