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.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 4 sustained the Commerce Department's decision that Australian exporter BlueScope Steel (AIS) didn't reimburse its affiliated U.S. importer, BlueScope Steel Americas, for antidumping duties. Judges Kimberly Moore, Todd Hughes and Leonard Stark echoed the Court of International Trade in finding that it would have been "unreasonable" for the exporter to include the AD in the price charged to the importer because the "exporter itself was not responsible for those duties."
Jason Prince, former chief counsel for the Office of Foreign Assets Control, has joined Akin Gump's economic sanctions practice, the law firm announced April 3. Prince was most recently a sanctions and export controls lawyer with Crowell & Moring after leaving OFAC in 2022.
Countervailing duty petitioner Rebar Trade Action Coalition opened its case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit against the Commerce Department's decision on remand finding that shipbuilding company Nur Gemicilik ve Tic, an affiliate of respondent Kaptan Demir, is not Kaptan's cross-owned input supplier. Filing an opening brief on April 2, the petitioner said that Commerce originally got it right in cross-attributing Nur's subsidies to Kaptan in the 2018 CVD review on rebar from Turkey (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1431).
NEW YORK -- In a marathon four-and-a-half hour oral argument session last week, Court of International Trade Judge Stephen Vaden sharply questioned the International Trade Commission's redaction process in an injury proceeding on phosphate fertilizers (OCP v. United States, CIT Consol. # 21-00219).