The EU has received assurances that Beijing will grant export licenses for shipments of gallium and germanium to European businesses despite the restrictions China placed on exports of the two metals in August (see 2307050018), European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said this week. Dombrovskis also said the bloc is looking to sanction additional Chinese firms that may be skirting restrictions against Russia and is hoping to ensure its upcoming supply chain due diligence regulations don’t impose excessive compliance burdens on EU companies.

The EU has received assurances that Beijing will grant export licenses for shipments of gallium and germanium to European businesses despite the restrictions China placed on exports of the two metals in August (see 2307050018), European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said this week. Dombrovskis also said the bloc is looking to sanction additional Chinese firms that may be skirting restrictions against Russia and is hoping to ensure its upcoming supply chain due diligence regulations don’t impose excessive compliance burdens on EU companies.

Ten members of the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, led by Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., are questioning the proportion of electronics shipments that have been released under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), after importers provided CBP with clear and convincing evidence that their supply chains had no Xinjiang links.

A bipartisan group of 72 House members and 22 senators is asking the Biden administration to use the Magnitsky Act to hold Azerbaijani officials accountable for what they called "the ongoing human rights crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh."

The FCC's draft NPRM that would kick off the agency's efforts to reestablish net neutrality rules largely mirrored the commission's 2015 order, according to our analysis of the draft. Commissioners will consider the item during an October open meeting that will include a full commission for the first time under Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel despite a potential government shutdown (see 2309270056). Meanwhile, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington said the FCC’s net neutrality push is not about protecting free speech but about protecting some tech companies.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has jurisdiction to review in a case on whether East St. Louis and other Illinois cities are entitled to franchise fees from streaming TV providers (case 22-2905), Netflix and other streamers said Tuesday. The appellees responded to a concern Judge Frank Easterbrook raised at oral argument earlier this month (see 2309120039). Easterbrook said there might not be diversity jurisdiction because Warner Media Direct is owned by AT&T Capital Services, which is based in Illinois where the complaint was first filed. The appellees conceded that’s the case and said they “withdraw any contention that diversity jurisdiction independently exists under Section 1332(a)” of the 2005 Class Action Fairness Act. They amended their jurisdictional statement to show how the court can act without needing to establish diversity jurisdiction. "The federal courts have subject-matter jurisdiction over this action under the" Fairness Act "because this putative class action involves minimally diverse parties, at least 100 class members, and an amount in controversy exceeding $5,000,000,” the streamers said. A local controversy exception in Section 1332(d)(4) "provides no basis to 'decline to exercise' jurisdiction for two independent reasons,” they said. No defendant is a citizen of the state where the action was first filed, under the meaning of Section 1332(d)(10), said the appellees: WarnerMedia Direct "is a citizen only of New York (its principal place of business) and Delaware (under whose laws it is organized)." Another reason the local controversy exception doesn't apply is that there have been many other class actions by different groups of cities asserting similar factual allegations against multiple defendants around the U.S., said the streamers: The 7th Circuit declined to apply the exception in a similar situation last year in Schutte v. Ciox Health.

A looming federal government shutdown could hinder work on important broadband and satellite regulatory initiatives, said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson during a Wednesday Axios event. The chances Congress will include language in a continuing resolution to restore at least parts of the FCC's spectrum auction authorities continued to dim Wednesday, but officials and lobbyists we spoke with don't believe those efforts are completely dead. The Senate and House made progress into Wednesday afternoon on their respective continuing resolution proposals to prevent a shutdown that would otherwise occur this weekend, but major differences between the two measures continued to stoke widespread apprehension on Capitol Hill.

The U.S. urged the Supreme Court of the United States to reject importer PrimeSource Building Products' petition for a writ of certiorari in a case on the expansion of Section 232 duties onto "derivative" products, telling the high court that PrimeSource's separation of powers claims fall flat. While the importer said the case can give the court a chance to reconsider its approach to nondelegation, the government argued that, under the principle of stare decisis, the petitioner must identify a "special justification" for revisiting established law, which it has failed to do here (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., Sup. Ct. # 23-69).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate Sept. 22 in Royal Brush Manufacturing v. U.S. The appellate court ruled in July that CBP violated importer Royal Brush's due process rights during an Enforce and Protect Act investigation by not providing the company with access to business confidential information (see 2307270038). The ruling has raised questions on how CBP would respond and how it will conduct its antidumping and countervailing duty evasion investigations in the future. Royal Brush counsel Steven Gordon emailed that the U.S. hasn't petitioned for a rehearing and that he doesn't expect an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (Royal Brush Manufacturing v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-1226).

The Commerce Department last week released the final version of its guardrails for recipients of Chips Act funding, measures it said will prevent its semiconductor industry grants from being used to benefit certain “foreign countries of concern,” including China.