Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top 20 stories published in 2022. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference numbers.
China officially requested dispute consultations with the U.S. at the World Trade Organization Dec. 15 over American export controls on certain semiconductors, the WTO announced. China, which announced the move earlier in the week (see 2212120061), said the restrictions violate Article XXII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (GATT), Article XXII of the General Agreement on Trade in Services, Article 8 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures and Article 64.1 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.
An indictment was unsealed Dec. 12 in a New York district court charging five Russian nationals and two U.S. nationals for their role in a global procurement and money laundering network for the Russian government, DOJ announced. Concurrent with the indictment, the Bureau of Industry and Security issued a 180-day temporary denial order against three of the defendants and two companies for illegally sending controlled exports to Russia as part of the Moscow-led scheme.
The Court of International Trade should circumvent the remand process and order the Commerce Department to grant exclusions to Section 232 steel and aluminum duties, steel company NLMK Pennsylvania argued in a July 22 brief. Likening its experience with the exclusion process at Commerce to "a bad remake of Groundhog Day," the plaintiff argued that Commerce has repeatedly ignored the record evidence which plainly shows that the U.S. companies do not have the capacity to fill NLMK's requests (NLMK Pennsylvania v. United States, CIT #21-00507).
Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
A U.S. appeals court on July 8 affirmed a 2020 District of Columbia court ruling dismissing FedEx’s lawsuit against the Bureau of Industry and Security, saying the shipping company failed to show BIS acted outside its authority. The court also rejected FedEx’s claims that the agency was using the Export Administration Regulations to apply overly burdensome liability standards on carriers and penalize them even when carriers do not have knowledge of violations.
The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security continued to deny 15 Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests from NLMK Pennsylvania in remand results at the Court of International Trade on May 18. BIS said that the U.S. industry has sufficient capacity to make the products that NLMK requested the exclusions for at a "satisfactory quality" (NLMK Pennsylvania v. United States, CIT #21-00507).
The Court of International Trade dismissed two cases brought by steel importer Voestalpine USA and steel purchaser Bilstein Cold Rolled Steel seeking to retroactively apply a Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion that was originally issued with a clerical error. Judge Mark Barnett said that the plaintiffs did not seek any relief that the court could grant since the entries eligible for the exclusion had already been liquidated, and the court does not have the power to order their reliquidation.
The Commerce Department reversed course on 45 Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion bids, granting the requests on remand at the Court of International Trade. Submitting the results of its voluntary remand request in an April 18 submission, Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security granted importer Mirror Metals' exclusion requests, finding that the bids should be granted after looking at whether the relevant steel article could be made at a sufficient level in the U.S. (Mirror Metals v. United States, CIT #21-00144).
U.S. steel manufacturer Maverick Tube lied to the Commerce Department when it objected to importer Maple Leaf Marketing's Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests, MLM told the Court of International Trade in a March 18 brief. As such, Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security's decision to deny these requests cannot be sustained, MLM argued. It urged the trade court to remand the case so Commerce can add communications the agency had with a subject matter expert on whose word the exclusion requests were denied (Maple Leaf Marketing v. United States, CIT #20-00125).