Nestle USA last week filed a motion opposing class certification in a lawsuit alleging that it "deceptively labels its chocolate as a sustainable, fair trade product" when its cocoa beans are allegedly farmed using child and trafficked labor in West Africa (Renee Walker v. Nestle USA, S.D. Cal. # 19-00723).
The U.S. and importer Siffron filed a pair of briefs at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit defending the Commerce Department's finding that Siffron's shelf dividers are outside the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on flexible magnets from China (Magnum Magnetics Corp. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1164).
The Solar Energy Industries Association argued that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit used the "right tools" of statutory construction to answer the "wrong question" of agency deference in sustaining President Donald Trump's revocation of a tariff exclusion for bifacial solar panels. Filing a response on Feb. 28 to the government's opposition to SEIA's rehearing en banc motion, the industry group said that the U.S. didn't dispute, and "thus concedes," that the Maple Leaf deferential standard is "deeply out of step" with the law set by the Supreme Court, CAFC and other circuit courts (Solar Energy Industries Association v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-1392).
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commissioner Kimberly Glas, calling e-commerce "a superhighway of the Wild West," asked witnesses at a hearing on Chinese exports and product safety if de minimis is a major contributor to unsafe products.
The following lawsuits have been filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The 1930 Tariff Act doesn't demand the Commerce Department conduct individual reviews for exporters in sunset reviews, the government said Feb. 26 in a filing with the Court of International Trade (Resolute FP Canada v. U.S., CIT # 23-00095).
The Solar Energy Industries Association asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Feb. 23 for leave to file a "short reply in support of their pending petition for rehearing en banc" in a suit on President Donald Trump's revocation of a tariff exclusion for bifacial solar panels (Solar Energy Industries Association v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-1392).
Various solar cell exporters and importers defended their right to intervene in a Court of International Trade lawsuit on the Commerce Department's pause of antidumping and countervailing duties on solar cells and modules from Southeast Asian nations found to be circumventing the AD/CVD orders on these goods from China. Filing a pair of reply briefs, the exporters and importers said they have the right to intervene since they have an "interest in the property or transaction at issue" (Auxin Solar v. United States, CIT # 23-00274).
CBP no longer will use the term “Forwarding Agent” in the Automated Export System, replacing it with “Authorized Agent,” the agency said in a Feb. 27 CSMS message. The Census Bureau requested the change, effective April 1, after the trade community told it the term forwarding agent can be “misleading.”
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade: