Jacob Kopnick

CBP on Oct. 18 asked the Alaska U.S. District Court to reconsider a temporary restraining order it issued on Jones Act penalties levied against Alaskan shipping companies, arguing that the TRO is "overbroad." Seeking to preserve its right to issue Jones Act penalties on shipments for which the five-year statute of limitations may run out, CBP wants to change the injunction from applying to any penalty notices relating to the Jones Act violation in question to just applying to penalty notices issued on or after Sept. 30 (Kloosterboer International Forwarding LLC, et al. v. United States, D. Alaska #3:21-00198).

The Court of International Trade remanded parts and sustained parts of the Commerce Department's final determination in the antidumping investigation into utility scale wind towers from Canada in an Oct. 22 opinion. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves sent back Commerce's decision to reject respondent Marmen's additional cost reconciliation information and use of the average-to-transaction methodology to discover masked dumping, while upholding the agency's weight-average of Marmen's plate costs, use of invoice dates as the date of sale, use of Marmen's reported sales of tower sections rather than complete towers, and decision not to apply facts otherwise available.

The Justice Department has accused Ericsson of violating its deferred prosecution agreement relating to a 2019 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act case, the Swedish telecommunications company said in an Oct. 21 news release. By "failing to provide certain documents and factual information," Ericsson violated the agreement, but it will have a chance to respond in writing to the nature of the breach, explaining any actions the company can take to remedy the situation, DOJ told Ericsson.

The European Union General Court dismissed a case brought by Russian steel company Novolipetsk Steel, holding in an Oct. 20 order that antidumping duties don't discriminate against goods that are subject to existing safeguard measures. Novolipetsk challenged the commission's antidumping duties on hot-rolled flat products of iron, non-alloy or other alloy steel and cold-rolled flat steel products from Russia. The commission had also established safeguard measures that applied tariff quotas for 26 categories of steel products, including the HRF and CRF goods.

The Labor Department properly considered all of the evidence when it continued to find that a unionized group of former AT&T call center employees are not entitled to trade adjustment assistance for outsourced jobs, the department said in an Oct. 20 reply brief filed at the Court of International Trade. Responding to accusations from the workers, Labor said what plaintiffs failed to do was point to any evidence that Labor failed to consider, the brief said (Communications Workers of America Local 4123, on behalf of Former Employees of AT&T Services, Inc. v. United States Secretary of Labor, CIT #20-00075).

The Commerce Department's decision not to grant a constructed export price offset in an antidumping duty investigation based on the claim that mandatory respondent Interpipe Ukraine didn't separately report the selling functions and the level at which it performed those functions from each home market channel of distribution runs contrary to the law, Interpipe argued in an Oct. 21 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Interpipe also pushed back against Commerce's decision to deduct Section 232 duties from its U.S. price when calculating its dumping margin (Interpipe Ukraine LLC, et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00530).

The Court of International Trade should reconsider its dismissals of multiple classification lawsuits over LED lamps because the events that resulted in the dismissals constituted "excusable neglect," counsel for Target and other LED importers argued in an Oct. 15 motion. In 10 cases making the classification challenge, the plaintiffs' counsel, John Peterson of Neville Peterson, argued that the plaintiffs' failure to extend the case's stay on the Customs Case Management Calendar "reasonably resulted from events both practical and circumstantial" (Target General Merchandise, Inc. v. United States, CIT #14-00283).

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

Air fryers are not ovens, and should not be classified as such, air fryer importer Tristar Products argued in its Oct. 20 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Kicking off its classification battle at CIT, Tristar argued that the air fryers don't belong under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading for ovens and should be spared the 25% Section 301 China tariffs levied on ovens (Tristar Products, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00563).

Korean steel company Hyundai Steel's port usage rights and sewerage fee reductions are not countervailable benefits, with both stemming from unique arrangements that were not government subsidies specific to Hyundai, the company said in an Oct. 21 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Hyundai Steel Company v. United States, CIT #21-00536).