US Moves to Strike Extra-Record Information in Chemical Manufacturer's Reply Brief
The U.S. on Feb. 11 filed a motion to strike as misleading a chemical manufacturer’s recent citation of a CBP letter, saying it was “a decision from a separate proceeding, issued by a separate agency” that had been brought up without sufficient prior notice (Cambridge Isotope Laboratories v. United States, CIT # 23-00080).
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Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, an importer of enriched isotope compounds, brought up the letter in its Jan. 23 reply (see 2502040051) in support of a motion for judgment filed in October (see 2410250044). The case is a classification dispute, and the importer used the letter to demonstrate CBP classified its product, enriched ammonium sulfate with 15 rather than the usual 14 nitrogen molecules, under a Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading not subject to antidumping or countervailing duty orders.
CBP issued the letter “nearly three months” after the Commerce Department released the scope ruling being litigated, the U.S. said.
But the letter hadn’t been on the record, and “because CIL waited until its reply brief to bring this extra-record evidence to light, we have had no notice or opportunity to address Attachment 1 either at the administrative level before Commerce or in our response brief,” it said.
It claimed the importer hadn’t offered any justification for the late addition to the record, as it wasn’t claiming Commerce “acted in bad faith or behaved improperly” and didn’t make the case that it had a “reasonable belief” the present record was lacking.
It also noted that a CBP classification wasn’t binding on the Commerce Department, making the letter irrelevant.