Greenlight Organic accused the U.S. government of invoking various "evasive tactics" in avoiding providing sufficient answers to the company's requests for admissions (RFAs) in a Court of International Trade case over the importer's alleged misclassification of imports to skirt duties. In a July 23 motion to compel the U.S. to respond to Greenlight's 116 RFAs, the importer wants the court to force the government to issue responses and overturn its objections that the requests were "incoherent and prevented a meaningful response" (United States v. Greenlight Organic, Inc. et al., CIT #17-00031).
Jacob Kopnick
Jacob Kopnick, Associate Editor, is a reporter for Trade Law Daily and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and International Trade Today. He joined the Warren Communications News team in early 2021 covering a wide range of topics including trade-related court cases and export issues in Europe and Asia. Jacob's background is in trade policy, having spent time with both CSIS and USTR researching international trade and its complexities. Jacob is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Public Policy.
Changi Esquel Textile (CJE), a Hong Kong-based apparel company and part of the Esquel group of companies, filed for a preliminary injunction on July 19 against its placement on the Commerce Department's Entity List. The company is seeking the injunction even though it expects an announcement soon on potential changes to its status on the list, it said. "The government has informed Plaintiffs that there will likely be a development regarding CJE’s continued Entity List designation by August 1," the company said.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Labor Department continued to find that a unionized group of former AT&T call center employees are not entitled to trade adjustment assistance for outsourced jobs in July 22 remand results filed in the Court of International Trade. On May 4, the court remanded the case to the agency after Judge M. Miller Baker found that Labor failed to discuss or even reference the union's evidence of why the trade adjustment case was warranted in its determination (see 2105040032) (Communications Workers of America Local 4123, on behalf of Former Employees of AT&T Services, Inc. v. United States Secretary of Labor, CIT #20-00075).
The Commerce Department was wrong to "jettison" its prior regulations in not adjusting for the indirect reimbursement for antidumping duties paid in an administrative review on hot-rolled steel flat products from Australia, the U.S. Steel Corporation said in a July 13 reply brief. Responding to arguments made by Commerce and defendant-intervenor BlueScope Steel, U.S. Steel argued that the scope of Commerce's reimbursement regulation includes both direct and indirect reimbursement, which runs counter to Commerce's decision to not adjust for indirect reimbursement.
The Commerce Department will review whether Russia is a non-market economy for antidumping duty purposes as part of a less-than-fair-value investigation into urea ammonium nitrate from the country, Commerce said in a notice initiating the investigation. Domestic producer CF Industries Nitrogen and its subsidiaries alleged that Russia was a nonmarket economy in the petition underlying the investigation.
The World Trade Organization updated on July 20 a list of trade facilitation measures due to be implemented by the end of next year, released at the meeting of the Committee on Trade Facilitation. From July 1 to Dec. 31, 2021, 136 facilitation commitments have been agreed to by 36 different WTO members, which include speeding up the release of perishable goods and publishing trade procedures. Until the end of 2022, there are 389 implementation commitments for 74 members. Deadlines are based on members' own implementation schedules. The list does not include any commitments made by the U.S.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade should dismiss an importer's challenge of CBP's deemed exclusion of its apparel imports because the protest was filed the day before the apparel was actually deemed excluded, the Department of Justice said in a July 19 brief backing the motion to dismiss. Due to this premature filing, DOJ said the court lacks Section 1581(a) jurisdiction on the matter (Alive Distributor Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00236).
The Commerce Department wants another shot to consider the Section 232 tariff exclusion requests filed by Allegheny Technologies Incorporated after the agency initially rejected them. In a July 21 motion for voluntary remand in the Court of International Trade, Commerce said that in light of a recent CIT decision, JSW Steel, Inc. v. United States, which found that Commerce's exclusion request denials were "devoid of explanation and frustrate judicial review," the agency needs to take another look at its denials (Allegheny Technologies Incoporated et al. v. United States, CIT #20-03923).