In a 10/30/19 Federal Register, the Department of Commerce announced its intention to implement by November 18 a ruling by the Court of International Trade (CIT) that vacated the 2017 amendments to the sugar anti-dumping and countervailing duty suspension agreements with Mexico.
As reported last week, the CIT found that Commerce’s failure to follow recordkeeping requirements cannot be described as harmless, and “this recordkeeping failure substantially prejudiced CSC Sugar.”
Commerce provides no details on how it will implement the court decision, but notes that under the ruling, the 2017 suspension agreements “must be vacated.”
There is also nothing about an appeal in the notice, but a decision in that regard would probably be the purview of the Justice Department, not Commerce, so we would not necessarily conclude that an appeal is off the table.
In the meantime, the 2017 AD & CVD suspension agreements remain “in force until Commerce takes action to implement the CIT’s ruling.”
Commerce published separate notices for the anti-dumping and countervailing duty agreements.
The 10/30/19 announcements on anti-dumping and countervailing duty suspension agreements are available below.