International Trade
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Abstract
With the change of administration in the United States, trade negotiations came to a near standstill in 2009. There was little to no discernable progress in the Doha round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, and despite Russia's efforts to the contrary, no new members joined the WTO. Dispute settlement activity was also subdued, with a considerable decrease in both the number of initiations and the number of Appellate Body and Panel Reports issued. The controversy over the so-called “zeroing�? methodology continued to represent a large portion of the Dispute Settlement Body's (DSB) agenda in 2009, while the remainder of the DSB's attention was focused almost exclusively on two challenges launched by the United States against China on intellectual property rights and distribution services for reading materials and audiovisual entertainment products. Several high-profile agency actions grabbed headlines in 2009, including the Section 421 safeguard remedy action against Chinese tire imports, which represented the first time a U.S. President had affirmed a U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) determination and imposed the special safeguards on China. Also drawing attention was the Commerce Department's (Commerce) initiation of the first countervailing duty (CVD) investigation on ex-ports from Vietnam, despite the fact that Vietnam is treated as a non-market economy (NME) country in antidumping (AD) investigations and administrative reviews. Commerce also articulated a new methodology for determining costs on a quarterly basis. In 2009, in several trade cases, the U.S. courts generally affirmed that broad deference is due to administrative agency authority to interpret U.S. international trade laws. The Supreme Court deferred to Commerce's decision regarding the applicability of AD laws to transactions structured as the sale of services. Likewise, several decisions by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit) used generous language to describe *94 the latitude of administrative agencies in interpreting the law. At the Court of International Trade (CIT), however, the issue of application of CVD laws to NMEs brought a remand to Commerce to square its inconsistent positions and ensure that the same unfair trade act was not double-counted in applying U.S. import duties.