The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of July 11-17:
A U.S. District Court judge sentenced a Chinese national to 15 months in prison and ordered him to pay a $63,000 fine for conspiracy to sell counterfeit computer chips to someone in the U.S., after a co-conspirator asked a U.S. citizen to steal integrated circuits from the U.S. military and replace those with fake ones, the Justice Department said (here). Daofu Zhang. who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, and two accomplices each owned businesses in China that bought and sold the fake chips, including two packages Zhang sent to the U.S. person in November 2015 containing eight counterfeit chips. Zhang’s co-conspirators await sentencing.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of July 4-10:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a challenge brought by Hutchison Quality Furniture over deemed liquidations for imports of wooden bedroom furniture from China. The Court of International Trade dismissed the case in 2015 due to a lack of jurisdiction (see 1506100011). The appeals court said in the July 6 decision (here) that CIT was correct to dismiss the case because the "true nature" of Hutchison's suit involves protestable actions by CBP. Although Hutchison did file a protest, it was submitted by mistake and did not raise the issues involved in the case, the court said. "The record demonstrates that Hutchison not only could have filed a protest, but that it in fact did so after Customs liquidated its entries," it said.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 27 - July 3:
Federal agents seized some 60 tons of Chinese honey on June 29 from a suburban Chicago warehouse due to suspected evasion of antidumping duties, ICE said in a new release (here). "The smuggled honey was contained in 195 55-gallon drums that were falsely declared as originating from Vietnam to evade anti-dumping duties applicable to Chinese-origin honey," the agency said. The seized honey likely came from the same Vietnamese exporter responsible for another 60 tons of honey recently seized by ICE (see 1605060036). The honey was allegedly imported "by a shell importer of record in New York, New York," ICE said. "Agents located the honey by combing through transportation shipping records to piece together its whereabouts."
The Court of International Trade is considering changes to its rules that would encourage parties to antidumping and countervailing duty cases to file a single joint appendix containing the parts of the administrative records cited by all parties (here). The amendments to Rule 56.2 and the Standard Chambers procedures would “provide a default option” for the filing of a joint appendix after all briefs have been filed and after all comments have been filed on a remand redetermination, according to a note on the changes provided by the CIT rules advisory committee. An “alternative option preserves the requirement for a separate appendix to be filed each time a party files a brief or comments on a remand determination and does not require a joint appendix after all briefs have been filed,” the advisory committee note said. Comments are due July 27.
The Court of International Trade on June 28 ordered the Commerce Department to reconsider a 2014 decision not to impose antidumping duties on prestressed concrete steel rail tie wire (here). The court took issue with certain aspects of how Commerce calculated the zero percent AD duty rate for Siam Industrial Wire. Commerce had also requested the court allow it to reconsider other aspects of Siam Industrial Wire’s rate. As the decision by Commerce not to impose AD duties on steel rail tie wire from Thailand was based on the zero percent rate assigned to Siam Industrial Wire, the decision could eventually result in a reversal of Commerce’s determination and the imposition of AD duties.
The Court of International Trade recently ordered the International Trade Commission to reconsider its 2013 finding that dumped and illegally subsidized imports of hardwood plywood from China do not injure U.S. domestic industry, in a decision publicly released on June 24 (here). The court’s order could eventually result in the resumption of antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on hardwood plywood from China and the eventual imposition of duties, after the ITC had brought the investigations to a close with no duties imposed with its final negative injury determination (see 13110524). The court ruled that the ITC failed to take certain factors into account when finding no material injury or threat of material injury. The commission’s remand results are due Sept. 8.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 20-26: