The Commerce Department is beginning four anti-circumvention inquiries into allegations that imports of several blends of hydrofluorocarbons imported from China, Malaysia and Turkey are circumventing the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hydrofluorocarbon blends from China (A-570-028), the agency said in a notice released July 6.
The Commerce department’s decision to use the all-others rate from an earlier antidumping duty investigation on quartz surface products to calculate the rate for the non-selected respondents in the first administrative review should be remanded to the agency, AD petitioner Cambria said in a June 30 motion at the Court of International Trade (Cambria Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00007).
Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard buy will benefit gamers, employees and competition globally, “as multiple industry participants and antitrust regulators around the world have recognized,” said Activision’s answer Friday (docket 3:23-cv-02880) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco to the FTC’s June 12 complaint to block the transaction (see 2306120074). Activision’s answer followed a five-day evidentiary hearing that ended June 29 on the FTC’s motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the transaction from closing (see 2306150001).
Missouri and Louisiana are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment claim against defendants from the White House, Surgeon General's office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FBI, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State Department, said U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty, a President Donald Trump appointee, in a 155-page Fourth of July memorandum ruling (docket 3:22-cv-01213).
The Commerce Department issued the final results of the antidumping duty administrative review on frozen warmwater shrimp from Thailand (A-549-822). Commerce set an AD rate of zero percent for Thai Union Group, the only company under review. Commerce won't assess AD duties on subject merchandise from Thai Union entered Feb. 1, 2021, through Jan. 31, 2022.. The new zero AD duty cash deposit rate for Thai Union takes effect July 5, the date of publication of these final results in the Federal Register.
A listing of recent Commerce Department antidumping and countervailing duty messages posted to CBP's website July 3, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. The messages are available by searching for the listed CBP message number at CBP's ADCVD Search page.
DOJ is appealing to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the preliminary injunction order signed Tuesday by U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty for Western Louisiana in Monroe, enjoining roughly five dozen Biden administration defendants from conversing with social media companies about perceived content suppression, said DOJ’s notice of appeal late Wednesday (docket 3:22-cv-01213).
Non-settling defendants in the long-running Local TV Advertising Antitrust Litigation (MDL No. 2867) moved the court to reconsider, vacate and/or stay orders on preliminary approval of settlements and notice, in a Wednesday filing (docket 1:18-cv-06785) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. They also moved the court for an order staying dissemination of notice to the settlement classes until the court has given non-settling defendants a chance to be heard on plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary approval of the proposed settlements. CBS, Fox, Cox Media and ShareBuilders agreed in May to a $48 million settlement with advertisers in the lawsuit stemming from a 2018 DOJ investigation of ad price collusion that arose during inquiries into the failed Sinclair/Tribune deal (see 2305300073). The non-settling defendants -- Tegna, Griffin Communications, Meredith, Sinclair, Gray Media, E.W. Scripps, Nexstar Media and Tribune Broadcasting -- don’t oppose the “substance” of the partial settlements; they oppose certain aspects of the proposed notice process, recipients of the proposed notice and the content of the notices. The process didn't involve "the level of scrutiny required by the Federal Rules and did not permit affected parties, including Non-Settling Defendants, to raise with the Court their objections to the settlement class definition and notice plan that would cause them harm,” it said. The notice order should be vacated and the proposed notice amended to clarify that non-settling defendants “have not been adjudged to have participated in an antitrust conspiracy,” it said. The court should stay preliminary approval proceedings and dissemination of notice until after briefing and a hearing on plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary approval of the four proposed settlements, it said. In a separate filing, Tegna, Raycom (now Gray Media) and Meredith moved the court to reconsider and vacate the portion of its order that compels them to turn over their customer contact information to plaintiffs’ counsel “without any restriction or limitation on its use.”
The Commerce Department published notices in the Federal Register June 30 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 June 30 on AD/CVD proceedings: