Norway's Petter Olberg, the facilitator on World Trade Organization reform, said he plans to circulate a report that "captures the key issues and perspectives expressed by all members" during "Reform Week," which was held from Dec. 2-5, ahead of the next WTO General Council meeting, which will take place Dec. 16-17, the WTO said. Discussions at Reform Week centered on "i) decision making, ii) development and special and differential treatment, and iii) a level playing field," the WTO said.
Chinese lidar company Hesai Technology filed its opening brief in its appeal of its case contesting its designation as a "Chinese military company," arguing that the Pentagon adopted an "absurdly broad reading of" the law, Section 1260H, and that the lower court "adopted a capacious view of the [Defense] Department's listing authority and a cramped view of Hesai's obvious prejudice" (Hesai Technology v. U.S. Dep't of Defense, D.C. Cir. # 25-5256).
The Commerce Department dropped its finding that a South Korean electricity subsidy is de facto specific on remand in a case at the Court of International Trade concerning the 2021 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from South Korea (POSCO v. U.S., CIT # 24-00006).
In a Dec. 3 reply supporting its motion for judgment, Nura said that the ITC “did not undertake the analysis that defendants claim is correct” to reach its affirmative critical circumstances finding (Nura USA v. United States, CIT Consol. # 24-00182).
The Commerce Department can limit its comparator group in assessing whether a certain enterprise or industry is the "predominant user" of a subsidy for purposes of determining de facto specificity, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Dec. 5. Judges Jimmie Reyna, Sharon Prost and Raymond Chen said the limitation on the comparator group must only be "sufficiently reasonable."
In a Dec. 2 motion for judgment, exporter Kukdo Chemical said the Commerce Department wrongly determined that China’s subsidization of the country’s own chemical industry conferred a transnational countervailable subsidy to it itself, an unrelated Korean producer (Kumho P&B Chemicals v. United States, CIT Consol. # 25-00143).
The Court of International Trade erred in ruling that importer Blue Sky The Color of Imagination's planning calendars are diaries under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 4820.10.2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Dec. 4. Judges Alan Lourie, William Bryson and Raymond Chen said the trade court violated the principle of stare decisis by skirting the CAFC's prior interpretation of the term "diary."
A Wisconsin federal court on Dec. 1 dismissed a case from a former prisoner at the Nunan Chishan Prison in China against Milwaukee Electric Tool and its parent company, Techtronic Industries, for allegedly importing goods made with forced labor. Judge Brett Ludwig of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin held that the civil remedy of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), which is the statute the prisoner sued under, doesn't apply to conduct occurring outside the U.S. (Xu Lun v. Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp., E.D. Wis. # 24-803).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Dec. 2 granted the government's voluntary remand motion for the Commerce Department to reconsider its use of the Cohen's d test in an antidumping duty case in light of the Federal Circuit's decisions in Stupp v. U.S. and Marmen v. U.S. largely invalidating the agency's use of the test, which is used to detect "masked" dumping (Mid Continent Steel & Wire v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1556).
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