Practice and Procedure: Rules of General Application, Safeguards, Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Investigations, and Section 337 Adjudication and Enforcement

<RULE> INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMMISSION <CFR>19 CFR Parts 201, 206, 207, and 210</CFR> <SUBJECT>Practice and Procedure: Rules of General Application, Safeguards, Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Investigations, and Section 337 Adjudication and Enforcement</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> International Trade Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The United States International Trade Commission (“Commission”) amends its Rules of Practice and Procedure concerning rules of general application, safeguards, antidumping and countervailing duty investigations, and section 337 adjudication and enforcement. The amendments are necessary to make certain technical corrections, to clarify certain provisions, to harmonize different parts of the Commission's rules, and to address concerns that have arisen in Commission practice. The intended effect of the proposed amendments is to facilitate compliance with the Commission's Rules and improve the administration of agency proceedings. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective February 3, 2025. The rule amendments as stated herein shall apply to investigations and proceedings instituted subsequent to the aforementioned date. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Cathy Chen, Office of the General Counsel, U.S. International Trade Commission, 500 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20436, telephone (202) 205-2392. Hearing-impaired individuals are advised that information on this matter can be obtained by contacting the Commission's TDD terminal at 202-205-1810. General information concerning the Commission may also be obtained by accessing its internet server at <E T="03">https://www.usitc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Section 335 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1335) authorizes the Commission to adopt such reasonable procedures, rules, and regulations as it deems necessary to carry out its functions and duties. This rulemaking seeks to improve provisions of the Commission's existing Rules of Practice and Procedure, including increasing the efficiency of its proceedings and reducing the burdens and costs on the parties and the agency. The Commission proposed amendments to its rules governing proceedings conducted under section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1337), as well as Title VII of the Tariff Act of 1930, which comprises 19 U.S.C. 1671-1677n, sections 201-202, 204, and 406 of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2251-2252, 2254, and 2436), and sections 301-302 of the United States-Mexico-Canada Implementation Act (19 U.S.C. 4551-4552). This rulemaking was undertaken to make certain technical corrections, to clarify certain provisions, to harmonize different parts of the Commission's rules, and to address concerns that have arisen in Commission practice. The intended effect of the amendments is to facilitate compliance with the Commission's Rules and improve the administration of agency proceedings. The Commission is concurrently considering additional amendments to its rules to be reflected in future Notices of Proposed Rulemaking. The current rulemaking is consistent with the Commission's plan to ensure that the Commission's rules are effective, as detailed in the Commission's Plan for Retrospective Analysis of Existing Rules, published February 14, 2012, and found at 77 FR 8114. This plan was issued in response to Executive Order 13579 of July 11, 2011, and established a process under which the Commission will periodically review its significant regulations to determine whether any such regulations should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed so as to make the agency's regulatory program more effective or less burdensome in achieving regulatory objectives. This process includes a general review of existing regulations in 19 CFR parts 201, 206, 207, and 210. Although the Commission considers these rules to be procedural rules which are excepted from notice-and-comment under 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(3)(A), the Commission invited the public to comment on all the proposed rules amendments consistent with its ordinary practice. This practice entails the following steps: (1) publication of a notice of proposed rulemaking (“NPRM”); (2) solicitation of public comments on the proposed amendments; (3) Commission review of public comments on the proposed amendments; and (4) publication of final amendments at least thirty (30) days prior to their effective date. The Commission published a NPRM in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> at 89 FR 22012-39 (Mar. 28, 2024), proposing to amend the Commission's Rules of Practice and Procedure concerning rules of general application, safeguards, antidumping and countervailing duty investigations, and section 337 adjudication and enforcement. The NPRM requested public comment on the proposed rules within sixty (60) days of publication of the NPRM, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> by May 20, 2024. The Commission received four sets of comments from organizations or law firms, including one each from the ITC Trial Lawyers Association (“ITCTLA”); the Customs and International Bar Association (“CITBA”); the ITC Modernization Alliance (“IMA”); and the law firm of Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox P.L.L.C (“Sterne Kessler”). The IMA is a coalition of companies in the technology, telecom, and automotive industries that have participated in section 337 investigations, including Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Google, HP, Intel, Microsoft, and Samsung, among others. The Commission has carefully considered all comments that it received. The Commission's response is provided below in a section-by-section analysis. The Commission appreciates the time and effort of the commentators in preparing their submissions. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Analysis of Proposed Amendments to the Commission's Rules</HD> The Commission has determined that these rules do not meet the criteria described in section 3(f) of Executive Order 12866 (58 FR 51735, Oct. 4, 1993) and thus do not constitute a significant regulatory action for purposes of the Executive Order. The Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) is inapplicable to this rulemaking because it is not one for which a notice of proposed rulemaking is required under 5 U.S.C. 553(b) or any other statute. Although the Commission chose to publish a notice of proposed rulemaking, these regulations are “agency rules of procedure and practice,” and thus are exempt from the notice requirement imposed by 5 U.S.C. 553(b). These rules do not contain federalism implications warranting the preparation of a federalism summary impact statement pursuant to Executive Order 13132 (64 FR 43255, Aug. 4, 1999). No actions are necessary under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (2 U.S.C. 1501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) because the rules will not result in expenditure in the aggregate by State, local, and Tribal governments, or by the private sector, of $100,000,000 or more in any one year, and will not significantly or uniquely affect small governments, as defined in 5 U.S.C. 601(5). The rules are not major rules as defined by section 804 of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 (5 U.S.C. 801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). Moreover, they are exempt from the reporting requirements of the Contract With America Advancement Act of 1996 (Pub. L. 104-121) because they concern rules of agency organization, procedure, or practice that do not substantially affect the rights or obligations of non-agency parties. The amendments are not subject to section 3504(h) of the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3504(h)). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Overview of the Amendments to the Regulations</HD> Many of the final rules set forth in this notice are identical to the correspondingly numbered proposed rules published in the NPRM on March 28, 2024. 89 FR 22012-39 (Mar. 28, 2024). For many of the proposed rules, only positive comments were received or no comment was received. Specifically, the commentators generally support replacing gender-specific language with gender-neutral language in the rules. These rules are: §§ 201.3a, 201.8, 201.15, 201.20, 201.32, 207.10, 207.15, 210.4, 210.12, 210.14, 210.15, 210.20, 210.25, 210.28, 210.31, 210.32, 210.34, 210.37, 210.49, 210.65, and 210.67. The commentators also generally support the elimination of paper copies and the permanent implementation of e-filing requirements. These rules are: §§ 201.8, 201.12, 201.14, 206.2, 206.8, 207.10, 207.15, 207.23, 207.25, 207.28, 207.30, 207.61, 207.62, 207.65, 207.67, 207.68, 210.4, 210.8, 210.14, and 210.75. The Commission has therefore determined to adopt the proposed gender-neutral language and e-filing requirements in the rules as stated in the NPRM. The Commission finds no reason to change those proposed rules on its own (except for certain technical, non-substantive changes) before adopting them as final rules. Thus, the preamble to those unchanged proposed rules is as set forth in the section-by-section analysis of the proposed rules found in the NPRM 89 FR at 22012-39. The section-by-section analysis below includes a discussion of all modifications suggested by the commentators. As a result of some of the comments, the Commission has determined to modify one (1) of the proposed amendments from the proposals in the NPRM. Regarding the provisions of § 210.12 that govern the content, sufficiency, and submission of a complaint alleging a violation of section 337, the Commission has determined to remove the language “of each element” from paragraph (a)(8)(i) to address the ITCTLA's concern that different jurisdictions may apply different legal standards for unfair acts alleged under section 337(a)(1)(A). The Commission agrees with the ITCTLA that section 337(a)(1)( ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 175k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━