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Law360 (March 5, 2020, 2:44 PM EST) -- The U.S. Department of Commerce is evaluating travel for staff working on trade remedy investigations on a case-by-case basis amid the spread of the novel coronavirus, but so far it has opted against imposing an all-out travel ban.
Commerce regularly travels abroad to conduct verifications of foreign companies on the receiving end of anti-dumping and countervailing duty allegations. A few of those trips have been postponed as COVID-19 has spread, but the agency is not yet deciding to halt verifications as a matter of policy, a spokesperson told Law360 on Wednesday.
"Consistent with the guidance of experts as coordinated by the administration, we are addressing the impact of coronavirus on the department's AD and CVD proceedings on a case by case basis," the spokesperson said. "There has been no blanket decision affecting all AD/CVD proceedings involving China or any other country."
A review of submissions to Commerce's filing system ACCESS revealed that the agency postponed two verification trips to South Korea in February in duty cases over wind towers and polyethylene terephthalate sheet.
COVID-19 has been likened to the flu, causing fever, coughing and shortness of breath. The World Health Organization has said the virus has infected 90,800 people around the globe and killed 3,100.
The virus originated in the Hubei province of China and has since spread to several other countries. As of Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended suspending nonessential travel to China, Iran, South Korea and Italy, while urging those with chronic health conditions to delay travel to Japan.
Trade remedy attorneys have peppered Commerce with requests to extend various deadlines relating to disruptions caused by the virus for overseas clients. The agency has been mostly accommodating to those requests, attorneys say, but the lack of an overall plan for virus-related delays has rankled some corners of the trade bar.
"There's no clear-cut rules. We're really surprised that Commerce doesn't have a policy on verifications," Grunfeld Desiderio Lebowitz Silverman Klestadt LLP partner Ned H. Marshak told Law360.
AD and CVD investigations, as well as reviews of existing duties, are governed by strict deadlines, and it's not yet clear how lenient Commerce will be in the face of persistent or more severe delays relating to the virus, according to Mowry & Grimson PLLC partner Kristin Mowry.
"The most challenging thing is just the uncertainty of [whether] all of these other verifications be postponed," Mowry said. "It's unclear how it will be affected, whether or not there will be an overall tolling of these deadlines."
--Editing by Haylee Pearl.
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