Four of five opposing plaintiffs “have no desire to have their legal claims tainted by political wrangling or the tabloid atmosphere that has come to accompany national elections,” they said Wednesday in their opposition (docket 3:22-cv-01213) to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s motion to consolidate a freedom of speech case with the similar Missouri v. Biden case in U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana in Monroe.
Defendants Vision Solar and Solar Xchange will pay the federal government and the state of Arizona $62,000 each of a $13.9 million suspended civil penalty to settle allegations they violated the FTC Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule and Arizona’s Consumer Fraud Act and Telephone Solicitations Act, said a stipulated order for a preliminary injunction and monetary judgment Thursday (docket 2:23-cv-01387) in U.S. District Court for Arizona. DOJ brought the complaint July 14 on the FTC’s behalf, plus with Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), as one of five newly announced FTC enforcement actions against illegal robocalls and telemarketing fraud that marked last week’s debut of Operation Stop Scam Calls (see 2307180035).
The Commerce Department illegally relied on unverified data from respondent Saffron Living Co. in an antidumping duty investigation on mattresses from Thailand, the Court of International Trade ruled in a July 20 opinion. While the government claimed that because Commerce was unable to verify Saffron's information, it could use the exporter's information as facts otherwise available, Judge M. Miller Baker said this reading would "eviscerate the separate requirement" that Commerce verify all information relied on in making a final determination.
Approximately $32 million in Section 232 duties on steel or aluminum should have been paid between March 2018 and Nov. 10, 2021, but weren't because of data errors in the transmissions between the Bureau of Industry and Security and CBP, or because CBP had not caught up to the fact that the exclusion had been filled. According to an analysis by the Government Accountability Office, more than 90% of the unpaid duties were due to CBP not realizing that exclusion volumes for a particular product and firm had been surpassed at the time of the entry, and the agency did not realize that fact until after the 90-day reliquidation period.
The Commerce Department has released the preliminary results of a countervailing duty administrative review of passenger vehicle and light truck tires from Vietnam (C-552-829). Rates from this review will be used to set importer assessments for entries from the exporters under review entered during the period Nov. 10, 2020, through Dec. 31, 2021.
The Commerce Department has released the final results of the antidumping duty administrative review on prestressed concrete steel wire strand from Thailand (A-549-820). Commerce assigned a 2.1% AD rate for the only company under review, The Siam Industrial Wire Co., Ltd. (SIW). Subject merchandise from SIW entered Jan. 1, 2021, through Dec. 31, 2021, will be liquidated at importer-specific rates. The new 2.1% cash deposit rate for SIW takes effect July 24.
The Commerce Department is set to exempt more gun safes from its antidumping and countervailing duty orders on metal lockers from China (A-570-133/C-570-134), it said in a notice announcing the initiation and expedited preliminary results of a changed circumstances review.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s, motion for consolidation filed in Missouri v. Biden (docket 3:23-cv-00381) is “moot,” said the DOJ’s Wednesday response in U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana in Monroe. Government defendants were responding to the court’s July 5 order to submit their response by Wednesday to RFK's motion for consolidation of his nearly identical lawsuit with the First Amendment complaint brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. Plaintiffs lack standing to bring their claims either as speakers or listeners, and the court should dismiss their complaint, said the DOJ's response. Defendants’ opposition to a preliminary injunction motion in the action is pending after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the DOJ a temporary administrative stay of the preliminary injunction imposed July 4 by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty for Western Louisiana to prevent dozens of Biden administration officials from conversing with social media platforms for the purposes of content moderation (see 2307140067). The freedom of speech lawsuit alleges a government social media censorship campaign targets “specific viewpoints” on “hotly disputed issues,” including COVID-19 vaccines, mask mandates and lockdowns and “the security of voting by mail.” If the court finds the Kennedy plaintiffs sufficiently established standing, defendants don’t oppose the request for consolidation, said the response.
The Commerce Department published notices in the Federal Register July 21 on the following AD/CV duty proceedings (any notices that announce changes to AD/CV duty rates, scope, affected firms or effective dates will be detailed in another ITT article):
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 21 on AD/CVD proceedings: