Fish importer Southern Cross Seafoods on Nov. 21 moved for an expedited briefing schedule and consideration of its case at the Court of International Trade concerning its application for preapproval to import Chilean sea bass. Southern Cross said that failure to expedite the case would deprive the importer of all its U.S. sales in the coming year as it is unable to import and sell Chilean sea bass until the embargo on its imports is lifted. Further, the fish imports are perishable goods, so Southern Cross said it needs a decision by March 2023 to have any meaningful relief (Southern Cross Seafoods v. United States, CIT #22-00299).
Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Plaintiffs in a conflict-of-interest suit against the Commerce Department at the Court of International Trade, led by Amsted Rail Co., amended their complaint after a similar case of theirs against the International Trade Commission was dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The amended complaint added a specific alleged instance in which ARC gave its former counsel, Daniel Pickard, now of Buchanan Ingersoll, information that is now being used against it in antidumping and countervailing duty proceedings (Amsted Rail Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00316).
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports have been fruitless, and antidumping and countervailing duty laws also are inadequate to counter the wide variety of abuses from China -- industrial espionage, forced technology transfer, discrimination against foreign sales in China, as well as enormous subsidies. "It is time for the U.S. government, ideally working with allies, to craft and implement a new set of trade defense instruments," ITIF Founder Robert Atkinson wrote in a white paper released Nov. 21.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Nov. 21 order denied customs broker test taker Byungmin Chae's motion for an oral argument in his case seeking credit on a select number of test questions. The court said that the appeal will be submitted on their briefs without oral argument (Byungmin Chae v. Janet Yellen, Fed. Cir. #22-2017).
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Nov. 14-20:
Plaintiffs in a conflict-of-interest suit asked the Court of International Trade for an injunction barring attorney Daniel Pickard and his firm Buchanan Ingersoll from participating in a set of antidumping and countervailing duty investigations before the International Trade Commission. Filing a motion for injunction pending appeal after the trade court dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds, the plaintiffs, led by Amsted Rail Co., argued that they're likely to succeed on appeal since, at the very least, they raised serious legal questions, warranting a stay order from the court. The plaintiffs also claimed that the court erred by illegally shifting the burden to the plaintiffs to identify specific times ARC shared confidential information with Pickard and Buchanan (Amsted Rail Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00307).
Two Commerce Department redeterminations excluding certain ductile iron flanges from the scope of a 2003 antidumping duty order were found unsatisfactory by the Court of International Trade, since they "are not in a form in which the court could sustain" them, according to two Nov. 18 orders by Judge Timothy Stanceu. Since Commerce said on remand that it will issue a revised scope ruling if the remand submissions are affirmed, the agency is looking for approval of a decision that is not a scope determination but "instead is preliminary to such a decision." As a result, the decision "could not be put into effect should it be sustained," and Commerce would "escape direct judicial review," the judge said.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports have been fruitless, and antidumping and countervailing duty laws also are inadequate to counter the wide variety of abuses from China -- industrial espionage, forced technology transfer, discrimination against foreign sales in China, as well as enormous subsidies. "It is time for the U.S. government, ideally working with allies, to craft and implement a new set of trade defense instruments," ITIF Founder Robert Atkinson wrote in a white paper released Nov. 21.
No lawsuits have been filed at the Court of International Trade since Nov. 16.