Japan recently launched an investigation on whether to renew its antidumping duties on certain potassium hydroxide from South Korea and China, according to an unofficial translation of a notice from the country's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The orders, which exclude imports from Hong Kong and Macau, have imposed a tariff of 73.7% on mainland China and 49.5% on South Korea since 2016. They are set to expire in August, and the investigation is expected to be completed within a year. Japan said potassium hydroxide is used as a raw material for chemical fertilizers and detergents.
The U.K.'s Export Control Joint Unit last week added anhydrous ammonia to the scope of a Russia-related general license that authorizes certain trade in fertilizers. The license covers certain financial services and other activities that make funds available to people connected with Russia "for the supply or delivery of specified fertiliser goods from Russia to a third country and making specified fertiliser goods available from Russia to a person in a third country," as long as they're intended for agricultural use.
A bill to impose a carbon border adjustment was reintroduced in the House and Senate this week. The Clean Competition Act is sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse D-R.I., ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee.
The EU is aiming to expand the scope of its upcoming carbon border tariff to apply to 180 steel and "aluminium-intensive" products produced downstream.
The EU is aiming to expand the scope of its upcoming carbon border tariff to apply to 180 steel and "aluminium-intensive" products produced downstream.
The Commerce Department reasonably found that a certain Moroccan tax subsidy isn't de facto specific, since it's widely available throughout the economy, the Court of International Trade held on Dec. 16. Judge Timothy Stanceu sustained Commerce's reversal of its specificity determination made on remand in a case on the 2020-21 review of the countervailing duty order on Moroccan phosphate fertilizer.
The Commerce Department properly found on remand that certain reductions in tax fines and penalties received by countervailing duty respondent OCP weren't de facto specific, the Court of International Trade held on Dec. 16. Sustaining the 2020-21 CVD review of Moroccan phosphate fertilizers, Judge Timothy Stanceu said applying de facto specificity to the program at issue would cut against the Statement of Administrative Action accompanying the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, since it's widely available in the Moroccan economy.
Steve Verheul, Canada's chief trade negotiator during President Donald Trump's first term, who worked on NAFTA's replacement, says Canada wants a trade pact that has known rules, and whose stability allows companies to make long-term plans.
President Donald Trump has threatened to place additional tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods over Mexican water use and Canadian fertilizer trade practices.
The Commerce Department can limit its comparator group in assessing whether a certain enterprise or industry is the "predominant user" of a subsidy for purposes of determining de facto specificity, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Dec. 5. Judges Jimmie Reyna, Sharon Prost and Raymond Chen said the limitation on the comparator group must only be "sufficiently reasonable."