Jacob Kopnick

Antidumping duty petitioner Ventura Coastal and respondent Louis Dreyfus Company Sucos traded briefs on the impact and relevance the Supreme Court's recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which eliminated the Chevron principle of deferring to agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes (Ventura Coastal v. United States, CIT # 23-00009).

The Court of International Trade on Aug. 13 sustained the Commerce Department's countervailing duties on ribbon exporter Yama Ribbons and Bows pertaining to its reception of synthetic yarn and caustic soda, two ribbon inputs, for less than adequate remuneration. Judge Timothy Stanceu said Commerce adequately used adverse facts available in multiple instances of the subsidy analysis due to the Chinese government's failure to respond to the agency to the best of its ability.

Bulgarian national Milan Dimitrov appeared Aug. 12 in a federal court for allegedly engaging in a scheme to violate U.S. export controls, DOJ announced. Extradited from Greece, Dimitrov is charged with conspiring with Russian citizen Ilias Sabirov and Bulgarian national Dimitar Dimitrov to procure "sensitive radiation-hardened integrated circuits" from the U.S. and export them to Russia via Bulgaria (see 2012210013).

The U.S. told the Court of International Trade that Southwest Airlines isn't entitled to keep Customs Passenger Processing Fees fees paid by its customers on canceled tickets. Filing a cross-motion for judgment on Aug. 13, the government argued that the airline's cancellation policy, which offers travel credits that Southwest then stores as profits if they go uncollected, can't usurp the law, which requires Southwest to "collect the fee and remit the fees collected to the Government" (Southwest Airlines Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00141).

The South Korean government urged the Court of International Trade to not confuse "disparity" with "disproportionality" in assessing the Commerce Department's de facto specificity finding on the Korean government's alleged provision of electricity below cost. Filing a reply brief on Aug. 12 in a case on the 2021 countervailing duty review on cut-to-length carbon-quality steel plate from South Korea, the Korean government said the fact that a few industries used a large amount of electricity doesn't establish de facto specificity (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00211).

Exporters Shanghai Tainai Bearing Co. and C&U Americas argued in an Aug. 13 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade that the Commerce Department's differential pricing analysis is not allowed by the statute in antidumping reviews and is only permissible for AD investigations (Shanghai Tainai Bearing Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00025).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in an Aug. 13 opinion again affirmed the president's ability to make trade-restrictive modifications to Section 201 safeguard tariffs. Judges Alan Lourie, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark partially granted a group of solar cell exporters' motion for panel rehearing of its 2023 decision, which came to the same conclusion, so that the court could conduct a de novo review of the applicable statute, instead of reviewing whether the president's interpretation of the law was a "clear misconstruction" of the statute.

The Court of International Trade's Pay.gov site will undergo maintenance on Aug. 17, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT, the court announced. Documents requiring payment on the site can't be filed on the CM/ECF platform during this time.

Russian-German national Arthur Petrov was extradited to the U.S., making his initial appearance in court Aug. 9 for allegedly committing export control violations, smuggling, wire fraud and money laundering, DOJ announced. Extradited from Cyprus, Petrov was charged for his part in a scheme to ship more than $225,000 worth of U.S.-sourced microelectronics to companies supplying weapons to the Russian military.

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade: