Jacob Kopnick

Importers led by Tenaris Bay City sent comments to the Court of International Trade last week opposing the International Trade Commission's separate decisions to cumulate both Russian and South Korean oil country tubular goods with goods from Argentina and Mexico. Tenaris Bay argued that the ITC improperly interpreted the statute in defining the phrase "compete with," which "uses the present tense and thus denotes" that the goods in question must compete with the like product during the "months leading up to and including vote day" (Tenaris Bay City v. United States, CIT Consol. # 22-00344).

The U.S. agreed to liquidate some of importer LE Commodities' steel tube entries without Section 232 duties and refund any duties paid, per the terms of a settlement reached by the parties in the importer's case against its denied requests for Section 232 exclusions (LE Commodities v. United States, CIT # 22-00245).

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 2 rejected exporter Chandan Steel Limited's motion for reconsideration of the court's previous decision sustaining the 145.25% total adverse facts available rate set against the exporter in the 2018-19 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on steel flanges from India.

The District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Oct. 1 unsealed an indictment against Russian citizen Aleksandr Ryzhenkov, the "second-in-command" of the Russian cybercriminal group Evil Corp., for using the BitPaymer ransomware variant against various U.S. individuals to "hold their sensitive data for ransom," DOJ announced.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Oct. 3 stayed the briefing schedule in a trio of cases brought by exporter Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari (Erdemir) while it considers the company's motion to consolidate the three appeals. All three cases center on the sunset review of the antidumping duty order on hot-rolled steel flat products from Turkey (Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-2242).

The EU General Court on Oct. 2 upheld the validity of the EU prohibition on the provision of legal advisory services to the Russian government and to entities established in Russia. The court said the sanction doesn't undermine the right of all persons to be advised by a lawyer for "conducting, pre-empting or anticipating judicial proceedings."

A Russian citizen living in North Georgia, Feliks Medvedev, was sentenced on Oct. 2 to three years and 10 months in prison for conducting an "unlicensed money transmitting business," which saw the transfer of over $150 million in Russian money. Medvedev was also sentenced to three years of supervised release following his prison sentence and told to pay a $10,000 fine, DOJ said.

There have been no lawsuits recently filed at the Court of International Trade.

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 1 approved increases to its transcript fee rates, the court announced. The court laid out the following prices for various transcripts: $4.40 per page for a 30-day transcript, $5.10 per page for a 14-day transcript, $5.85 per page for a seven-day transcript, $6.55 per page for a three-day transcript, $7.30 per page for a next-day transcript and $8.70 per page for a two-hour transcript. The cost of a first copy to each party is $1.10 for a 30-, 14- and seven-day transcript. Copy costs per party are $1.30 for a three-day transcript and $1.45 for a next-day and two-hour transcript.

The Council of the European Union on Oct. 2 appointed two new judges to the EU Court of Justice and seven new judges to the General Court. In addition, Andrea Biondi, professor of EU law at King's College London, was appointed advocate-general to the Court of Justice.