The Commerce Department properly applied adverse facts available when weighing antidumping respondent Bosun Tool's country of origin information using a first-in, first-out (FIFO) methodology, the Court of International Trade said in an Oct. 27 opinion. Judge Claire Kelly found that although Bosun cooperated to the best of its ability with the AD review, the use of AFA was warranted because an exporter is reasonably expected to keep documents that properly document country of origin -- something that the FIFO methodology does not do.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit has the jurisdiction to hear a case involving Turkey's state-owned bank Halkbank's sanctions-evasion charges, the appellate court said in an Oct. 22 opinion. Rejecting a motion to dismiss the case from Halkbank, a three-judge panel at the court said that the district court properly found that it had jurisdiction over federal criminal prosecution of Halkbank, skirting immunity conferred under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. However, the 2nd Circuit stopped short of answering whether the FSIA universally confers immunity on foreign sovereigns in a criminal context. Even if the act gave Halkbank immunity, the panel said that Halkbank qualified for commercial activity exceptions to immunity because its sanctions evasion scheme happened in the U.S.
Anonymous solar producers still have yet to justify their requests for anti-circumvention inquiries on solar cells from Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, so the Commerce Department should decline to initiate the inquiries altogether, said NextEra and Florida Power & Light in their Oct. 25 response to additional information submitted by the producers nearly two weeks prior.
The Court of International Trade sustained on Oct. 27 the Commerce Department's second remand results in a case over the sixth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on diamond sawblades and parts thereof from China. Judge Claire Kelly upheld Commerce's use of adverse facts available when weighing respondent Bosun Tool's country of origin information using a first-in, first-out methodology, despite Bosun's full cooperation. Kelly also rejected Bosun's argument that if AFA were to be applied, the scope of its application should be limited to the missing country of origin information for the FIFO sales, holding instead that Commerce reasonably found that, without reliable country of origin information, the agency could not accurately pair price data in the U.S. sales database with the correct country of origin.
The trade ministers for nearly 30 least-developed countries (LDCs) released a declaration laying out their trade priorities in advance of the 12th Ministerial Conference being held Nov. 30 - Dec. 3, the World Trade Organization said. The priorities include equal access to and faster distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and effective implementation of integration of LDCs into the global trading system. This latter point includes preferential rules of origin decisions, an LDC services waiver and duty-free market access for LDC products, the WTO said. The LDCs also called for a working group on WTO reforms to be launched at MC12. “MC12 should respond adequately to mitigate the social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Ali Djadda Kampard, Chad’s minister for trade and industry and coordinator of the WTO LDC Group.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit released its mandate Oct. 22 for its decision backing the Commerce Department's rejection of data corrections submitted by an antidumping respondent. In August, the Federal Circuit reversed the Court of International Trade's decision, holding that the corrections were not "minor," meaning that Commerce was justified when it originally rejected the revisions and levied an adverse facts available AD duty rate on Goodluck India (see 2108310040). The case involved cold-drawn mechanical tubing from India (Goodluck India Limited v. United States, CIT #18-00162).
The Court of International Trade on Oct. 22 backed the Commerce Department's decision to pick Malaysia as the primary surrogate country in an antidumping duty review, despite using a Romanian company's financial statements to determine the surrogate financial ratios is backed by substantial evidence. Sustaining Commerce's remand results in the AD review, Chief Judge Mark Barnett also upheld the agency's surrogate value selection for bituminous coal, an input of the subject merchandise of the review, activated carbon, and Commerce's financial ratio calculations.
Ukraine launched a safeguard investigation on tricone drilling bits Oct. 13, it notified the World Trade Organization, the WTO said Oct. 22. The investigation will cover drilling bits with working parts other than natural or artificial diamond, "regardless of the country of origin and export." Ukraine cited substantial evidence from a national producer that documented increased imports of the subject merchandise could cause injury to the domestic producer. Ukraine's Ministry of Economy will conduct a registration of interested parties within 30 days from the publication of its Oct. 11 notice of the decision to conduct the inquiry.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York: