Crowell & Moring has released Litigation Forecast 2020: What Corporate Counsel Need to Know for the Coming Year. The eighth-annual Forecast provides forward-looking insights from leading Crowell & Moring lawyers to help legal departments anticipate and respond to challenges that might arise in the year ahead. For 2020, the Forecast focuses on how the digital revolution is giving rise to new litigation risks, and it explores trends in employment non-competes, the future of stare…

Today President Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He signed a “Phase One” trade agreement, the first formal text agreement between the two sides since the United States initiated the Section 301 investigation in August 2017, which has since led to mounting U.S. and Chinese tariffs affecting bilateral trade. The agreement does not specifically address any tariffs currently in place. Instead, it includes pledges by China to increase U.S. exports of certain goods by…

Last week, the U.S. Court of International Trade(CIT) granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the federal government, including U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan, from implementing the withdrawal of a tariff exclusion for bifacial solar panels without due process. The government’s withdrawal comes only months after the tariff exclusion had been put in place following an extensive notice-and-comment process. Judge Gary S. Katzmann wrote in his…

On Wednesday, October 2, 2019, the World Trade Organization (WTO) allowed the U.S. to set duties on $7.5 billion worth of European Union goods as a consequence of the long-running legal battle over subsidies to Airbus. This ruling allows President Trump’s administration to set increased import duties on such articles as EU wines, cheeses, motorcycles and apparel luxury items such as men’s suits and handbags. The linked tariff list shows the final list of items to…

The Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (MTB) process is administered by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). Under the MTB process, U.S. importers may petition for duty-free or reduced-duty treatment of certain imported products by submitting an MTB petition to the ITC. The ITC has indicated that it will open its portal and begin accepting MTB petitions at 8:45am on October 11, 2019. In general, for an MTB petition to be successful, there must not be any domestic…