Mary Jane Alves is a partner in Cassidy Levy Kent’s Washington, DC office. Her practice focuses on antidumping, countervailing duty, and safeguard enforcement and compliance. She specializes in injury analysis and related appeals but also enjoys litigating other aspects of these practice areas. Ms. Alves has over two decades of experience in unfair trade cases spanning a range of industries, such as agriculture, chemicals, electronics, energy, carbon and stainless steel, other metals and minerals, textiles, and manufactured goods. She is recognized in The Best Lawyers in America for International Trade and Finance Law.
Government Service
Before returning to private practice, Ms. Alves worked for 17 years at the U.S. International Trade Commission (“Commission”) in the Office of the General Counsel where she provided legal oversight to multidisciplinary investigative teams in trade remedy cases. During this period, Ms. Alves drafted the Commission’s injury determinations in scores of original investigations and five‑year reviews, including in cases with injury issues that arise less frequently, such as material retardation, transshipment, the agricultural provisions, and the cumulation exception for imports from Israel. She served as the lead attorney on injury issues in the global safeguard investigation of certain solar products, the only general safeguard ever fully defended before a World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel. Ms. Alves also successfully represented the agency as lead counsel in disputes before the U.S. Court of International Trade (“CIT”), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“Federal Circuit”), the World Trade Organization (“WTO”), and North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”) binational panels. Ms. Alves also provided technical advice on injury issues to trade negotiators for The Trans‑Pacific Partnership and Doha Rules negotiations.
Honors
- Recognized by Best Lawyer’s in America for International Trade and Finance Law
Representative Matters
- Maintain solid injury record working with various team permutations
- Defended U.S. mattress industry in successful injury investigation of less than fair value imports from China and secured relief from whack‑a‑mole imports in subsequent injury investigation of subsidized Chinese imports and dumped imports from seven additional countries
- Maintained orders for U.S. industry in contested multi‑country five‑year injury reviews of steel products such as OCTG, CORE, and CRS
- Obtained relief for U.S. tomato industry in an injury investigation that began two decades earlier
- Achieved first‑ever extensions of two U.S. global safeguard measures
- Navigated various single‑ and multi‑country five‑year reviews into expedited reviews, yielding an additional five years of import relief at reduced cost to a range of domestic industries, such as sugar, nickel plate, seamless SLP pipe, and HFC blends
- Prevailed for respondents with negative injury determinations in investigations of magnesium from Israel and newsprint from Canada
- Attained continuation of order with an affirmative five‑year review injury determination regarding frozen fish fillets from Vietnam
- Achieved orders in original injury investigations of fluid end blocks, aluminum wire and cable, copper pipe and tube, and sodium nitrite
Professional Affiliations
- Co‑Chair, International Trade Committee, Customs and International Trade Bar Association (“CITBA”)
- Former Co‑Chair, Continuing Legal Education & Professional Responsibility, CITBA
- Member, Women in International Trade
- Member, Judicial Conference Planning Committee 15th Judicial Conference of the U.S. Court of International Trade
- As an associate in the Washington, DC office of a multinational law firm, Ms. Alves previously advised respondent clients in antidumping and countervailing duty disputes before the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Commission, and the CIT. She assisted with preparing and verification of submissions in market and non‑market economy proceedings, obtaining permanent injunctive relief, negotiating a suspension agreement, securing non‑initiation of an investigation for lack of standing, and terminating a separate suspension agreement that yielded a negative injury determination in the resumed investigation.
- Ms. Alves previously served as a volunteer law clerk to two CIT judges, and she worked as a senior trade paralegal at a small law firm.
Recent Speaking Engagements
- Panelist, Title VII Hot Topics: Interplay between Commerce and the International Trade Commission at Georgetown International Trade Update (2022)
- Panelist, International Trade Commission Emerging Issues at Georgetown International Trade Update (2019)
- Panelist, The International Trade Commission – “All Things” ITC at Federal Circuit Bar Association Bench & Bar (2018)
Publications
- Reflections on the Current State of Play: Have U.S. Courts Finally Decided to Stop Using International Agreements and Reports of International Trade Panels in Adjudicating International Trade Cases?, 17 Tul. J. Int’l & Comp. L. 299 (2009).
Education
- J.D., George Mason University
- B.A., Georgetown University
Languages
- English
- French (conversational)
Bar Memberships
- New York
- District of Columbia
- United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
- United States Court of International Trade