James E. Ransdell

James E. Ransdell

Partner / Washington

James Ransdell is a partner in Cassidy Levy Kent’s Washington, D.C. office. Mr. Ransdell advises businesses and governments seeking to apply U.S. trade and customs laws in ways that maximize the advantage to their operations, including supply chain management, traditional trade remedies, and Executive-led tariffs (e.g., Section 232, Section 301, IEEPA). He represents petitioner and respondent companies in antidumping, countervailing duty, and customs matters before all major U.S. trade agencies, and regularly leads successful challenges to and defenses of agency outcomes before the U.S. Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Mr. Ransdell’s commentary has been featured on news programs including CNBC, TaiwanPlus, and the Tokyo Broadcasting System, and he has been quoted in Trade Law Daily, The Export Practitioner, and other trade publications.

Prior to joining Cassidy Levy Kent, Mr. Ransdell served as a clerk to Judge Jane A. Restani of the U.S. Court of International Trade. He assisted with anti-dumping duty, countervailing duty, Section 232, and duty drawback cases concerning steel, solar, chemical, and rubber products. He also worked on matters before the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Second, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits, where Judge Restani sat by designation. As a researcher for professors at the Universities of Leiden and Oslo, Mr. Ransdell has assisted in advising international organizations on questions of institutional law and has written on World Trade Organization rules, such as those governing regional trade negotiations, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and compulsory licenses.

Mr. Ransdell received his J.D. from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri, where he served as an Articles Editor of the Washington University Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. While in law school, he studied abroad at Fudan University in Shanghai and completed fellowships with the congressional office of U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch and the Legal Resources Centre in Accra, Ghana. Thereafter, Mr. Ransdell studied international trade law and dispute settlement through an Advanced LL.M. program at Leiden University. He graduated first in his LL.M. class and was an Assistant Editor of the Leiden Journal of International Law.

Government Service

  • Clerk to the Hon. Jane A. Restani, U.S. Court of International Trade

Representative Matters

  • Trade Policy: Assist companies and governments to understand the substance of U.S. trade and tariff policy developments and design strategies for productive and well-timed engagement.
  • Supply Chain Management: Help companies to evaluate and improve internal compliance procedures and identify opportunities for mitigating the impact of new tariffs.
  • Trade Competition: Advise companies regarding options for addressing competitors that are not abiding by U.S. trade & customs law, including the preparation of allegations for transmission to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Trade Representative.
  • Section 232: Prepare company comments, questionnaire responses, and proposals to adjust the scope and application of tariff action affecting various product groups.
  • Section 301: Design and prepare exclusion requests in connection with four-year reviews and ad hoc interim exclusion windows.
  • High Stakes Litigation: Successfully (1) challenge Presidential moratorium on the application of antidumping and countervailing duties; (2) defend injury determination underpinning multiple AD/CVD orders; and (3) secure first-of-its-kind intervention decision determining whether a company could benefit from appellate duty revision.
  • Antidumping Duties: Plan and implement strategies for developing agency record necessary to obtain commercially meaningful margin results for petitioners in contested cases, including successful deployment of complex allegations. Assist respondent companies in favorably translating operations and sales data into Commerce Department’s antidumping framework while minimizing the risk of unfavorable adjustments.

Publications

  • Navigating U.S. Tariffs and Managing Supply Chains, Taiwan Business TOPICS (American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan, May 2025).
  • HMT – A Tax, or Not a Tax? That is But the First of Many, Many Questions, 57 U.C. Davis Law Review Online 81-92 (U.C. Davis, Mar. 2024).
  • Institutional Innovation by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, 9(1) Asian Journal of International Law 125-152 (Cambridge Univ. Press, Jan. 2019).
  • Book Review: X. Yi-chong and P. Weller, The Working World of International Organizations: Authority, Capacity, Legitimacy, 32(4) Leiden Journal of International Law 887-890 (Cambridge Univ. Press, Aug. 2019).

Education

  • LLM, Leiden University School of Law
  • JD, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
  • Fulbright Scholar, Kobe University, Japan
  • BA, East Asian Studies, Centre College

Languages

  • English
  • Japanese (Conversational)
  • Mandarin (Conversational)

Bar Memberships

  • District of Columbia
  • U.S. Court of International Trade
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit