CIT Finds No Standing for Burmese Mattress Importer Without Investigation Entry of Appearance
The Court of International Trade ruled April 22 that filling out a single mandatory importer questionnaire response at the beginning of an International Trade Commission injury investigation isn’t enough for an importer to establish itself as a party to the proceeding.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
In doing so, CIT Judge Timothy Reif granted the U.S.’s motion to dismiss a case brought by importer Pay Less Here to challenge the ITC’s affirmative critical circumstances finding regarding mattresses from Burma.
Reif explained that, to be a party to a proceeding, an entity “must reasonably convey the separate status of a party” in a way that is “meaningful enough ‘to put [the agency] on notice of a party’s concerns.’” The requirement is only meant to prevent litigation brought by “someone who did not take the opportunity to further its interests on the administrative level,” he said.
Importer Pay Less Here brought its case to CIT in 2024. The U.S. asked to dismiss the suit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, pointing out that Pay Less hadn’t filed an ITC entry of appearance for the investigation. The importer had only responded to an initial questionnaire -- the same mandatory questionnaire 80 other importers answered, it said.
Reif said that Pay Less Here had “failed even to clear the unquestioningly low bar of filing an entry of appearance in proceedings before the Commission.” He said the law allows the ITC to adopt the regulations it needs to function, and that the entry of appearance filing requirement was reasonable.
He distinguished the cases from two others cited by Pay Less Here, Laclede Steel and Government of Canada. In the former, two South Korean manufacturers asked the Commerce Department for “exclusion as mandatory respondents, thereby impliedly indicating ... [their] willingness to accept an ‘all others’ rate.” They also obtained legal counsel and filed appearances for the relevant antidumping duty investigation and had legal counsel, he said. Government of Canada, meanwhile, saw the U.S. attempt to dismiss a plaintiff’s case in opposition to “decades of Commerce’s practice regarding intervention as a matter of right for non-selected respondents,” he said.
(Pay Less Here v. U.S. International Trade Commission, Slip Op. 25-50, CIT # 24-00152, dated 04/22/2025; Judge: Timothy Reif; Attorneys: Alex Schaefer of Crowell & Moring for plaintiff Pay Less Here; Cayla DeJaco for defendant U.S. International Trade Commission; and Mary Jane Alves of Cassidy Levy Kent for defendant-intervenors led by Brooklyn Bedding)