The England and Wales High Court adjourned a trial involving Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, only recently releasing the May 6 judgment publicly. Deripaska was sanctioned by many of the world's leading economies in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As a result, the defendant cannot pay his lawyers for legal representation in the present case, so the legal team is "coming off the record." The lawyers applied to adjourn to avoid an unfair trial. In vacating the case, Justice Sara Cockerill ruled she is "satisfied in this significant hard-fought and complex case a fair trial would not be possible -- however dim a view one takes of Mr Deripaska's past actions." The case involves a long-running dispute over alleged breaches by Deripaska, with Navigator Equities obtaining an arbitral award against the oligarch.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. on July 14 appeared in a case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over whether the Commerce Department has the statutory authority to conduct expedited countervailing duty reviews. The court in June invited the U.S. to file an amicus brief after it failed to appear to that point (see 2206100045). In response, Elizabeth Speck at DOJ asked the court for another 92 days to file the amicus brief, filing an unopposed motion for extension of time. In the brief, Speck said that the additional 92 days is necessary since the U.S. has decided not to participate in the appeal.
Importer and U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese manufacturing company, Wanxiang America Corp. is guilty of negligence by making false statements and omissions over its entries of wheel hub assemblies, radial ball and tapered roller bearings, and universal joints and their parts, the U.S. argued in a July 13 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Through its negligence, Wanxiang America avoided antidumping duties and customs duties on its entries, cheating the U.S. out of over $31 million in lost revenue, the U.S. said. DOJ filed its case to seek the lost duty payments along with a penalty (United States v. Wanxiang America Corporation, CIT #22-00205).
President Donald Trump's move to revoke an exclusion to Section 201 safeguard measures on bifacial solar panels was "particularly pernicious," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Clean Power Association argued in a July 12 amicus brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The amici said that safeguard measures should be applied in a way that's "predictable, circumscribed, and allows for reasonable business planning," and that Trump's move violated these principles. Revoking the exception injected uncertainty into government-imposed safeguard measures, which will have a ripple effect in the economy, potentially making inflation and supply chain crises worse, they said (Solar Energy Industries Association v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1392).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Plaintiffs Garg Tube Export and Garg Tube Limited signed off on the Commerce Department's reversal of its finding that a particular market situation existed in India related to the price of hot-rolled coil in an antidumping duty review (see 2206090067). Submitting comments on Commerce's remand results at the Court of International Trade, Garg said that it "fully supports" the finding that no PMS existed. The result, if sustained, would be a decrease in Garg's margin to zero percent. The case concerns the 2017-18 administrative review of the AD duty order on welded carbon steel standard pipes and tubes from India. In the second court opinion in the case, the trade court ruled that Commerce failed to show how certain market phenomena gave rise to a unique set of facts distorting the cost of materials or other processing such that Garg's cost of production isn't within the normal course of trade (see 2203230018) (Garg Tube Export and Garg Tube Limited v. United States, CIT #20-00026).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dismissed four appeals over whether the Commerce Department can make a particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test when determining normal value in antidumping duty proceedings. The appellant in each case, AD petitioner Wheatland Tube, voluntarily moved to dismiss the cases after it didn't petition the Supreme Court to hear a key case, Hyundai Steel v. U.S. In that decision, the Federal Circuit said the statute doesn't permit Commerce to make a PMS adjustment to the sales-below-cost test (see 2112100039). Wheatland subsequently dropped all of its appeals on the subject except for one, which it argued should be continued even in light of the Hyundai Steel decision (see 2207120072). The court, in a series of three orders, dismissed four of the appeals and lifted the stay in the remaining one (Saha Thai Steel Pipe v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #22-1172, #22-1173, #22-1174) (Husteel v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #22-1300).
Florida-based importer Siboney Corporation violated the law by fraudulently avoiding paying Federal Excise Tax (FET) on 32 entries of large cigars, the U.S. argued in a July 12 complaint at the Court of International Trade. DOJ alleged that Siboney improperly calculated its amount of FET owed on the entries based on the sales price from the Nicaraguan exporter plus a 5% markup to a "fictitious" company, Blue Mountain Cigars, and an affiliated wholesaler, GAMATTSA (United States v. Siboney Corporation, CIT #22-00204).
A World Trade Organization arbitrator determined the methodology Canada can use to set the level of retaliatory measures it can impose on goods imported from the U.S. if the U.S. applies countervailing duties on Canadian goods based on a measure found to be inconsistent with WTO rules. In the July 13 decision, the arbitrator said Canada would set the appropriate level of nullification or impairment in the future "based on the four-variety Armington model," which was recommended by the U.S. and can quantify the trade decline experienced by Canada through a particular use of the U.S.'s adverse facts available measures in CVD proceedings.