The U.S. last week transferred thousands of weapons and rounds of ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces that were confiscated from unflagged vessels en route to Yemen from Iran as part of a civil forfeiture action, DOJ announced on April 9. The shipment included "over 5,000 AK-47s, machine guns, sniper rifles, and RPG-7s, and over 500,000 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition."
Chinese exporter Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to "re-visit and question" the Commerce Department's basis for its non-market economy policy in antidumping duty proceedings. The exporter noted that the policy "has reigned for over twenty years without serious legal challenge," arguing that the appellate court has never directly reckoned with the policy's legality and that it's "high time" for such a review (Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2245).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The U.S. told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 5 that the Commerce Department properly countervailed the Port of Incheon program in South Korea. Filing a response to respondent Hyundai Steel Co., the government said that key Federal Circuit precedent -- AK Steel Corp. v. U.S. -- controls in this instance in that the agency wasn't required to consider Hyundai's construction costs in building the port (Hyundai Steel Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1100).
David Laufman, former chief of DOJ’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, is retiring, he announced on LinkedIn last week. Laufman was most recently a partner with Wiggin and Dana (see 1905140075) after leaving DOJ in 2018, where he oversaw the agency’s export control and sanctions investigations and prosecutions.
The U.K. High Court of Justice last week said it has jurisdiction to hear a nearly $10 billion dispute between Russian aircraft companies and the owners, lessors and financing banks of those aircraft leased to Russia.
Two Russian nationals living in Florida pleaded guilty this week to conspiring to violate the Export Control Reform Act by illegally shipping aviation technology to Russian end users, DOJ announced April 4.
In choosing a second mandatory respondent for a nearly 5-year-old Chinese passenger vehicle and light truck tires antidumping review and removing separate status from four other exporters that refused to participate, the Commerce Department fully complied with a 2023 Court of International Trade remand order (see 2302020032), the government said April 2 (YC Rubber Co. (North America) v. U.S., CIT # 19-00069).
The Court of International Trade on April 4 upheld the Commerce Department's use of the invoice date rather than the contract date for the date of sale for respondents Kaptan Demir and Colakoglu Metalurji in the 2020-21 review of the antidumping duty order on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey.
The Court of International Trade on April 3 again sent back the Commerce Department's decision to countervail exporter KG Dongbu Steel's three debt-to-equity restructurings after initially declining to countervail them in the preceding three countervailing duty reviews on corrosion-resistant steel products from South Korea.