A penalty action against the owner and director of importer Atria, Kevin Ho, should not be dismissed even though the U.S. served his counsel with the wrong summons and complaint, the Department of Justice said in an Aug. 17 reply brief. Rather, the court should grant the DOJ's motion to expand Ho's time of service, allow Ho to stipulate to his liability in line with his guilty plea in a related criminal case, grant DOJ's motion to consolidate the two actions against Ho and stay the consolidated matter until Ho serves his prison sentence, the brief said (United States v. Chu-Chiang "Kevin" Ho, et al., CIT #19-00038).
Jacob Kopnick
Jacob Kopnick, Associate Editor, is a reporter for Trade Law Daily and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and International Trade Today. He joined the Warren Communications News team in early 2021 covering a wide range of topics including trade-related court cases and export issues in Europe and Asia. Jacob's background is in trade policy, having spent time with both CSIS and USTR researching international trade and its complexities. Jacob is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Public Policy.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. partially opposed Ashley Furniture Industries' motion for an open-ended statutory injunction against the liquidation of its mattress imports, saying that the injunction should only run to the end of the first antidumping administrative review period. Making its case in the Court of International Trade, the U.S. said that Ashley failed to show that it will suffer immediate and irreparable harm for its mattress entries made after April 30, 2022 -- the date that "corresponds to the end of the period of review for the first administrative review" (Ashley Furniture Industries, LLC, et al. v. U.S., CIT #21-00283).
CBP cannot limit the amount of drawback that can be claimed on excise taxes, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in an Aug. 23 opinion upholding the Court of International Trade's ruling. Holding that the CBP regulation defied the "clear intent of Congress," the appellate court ruled against the government appeal of CIT's decision, providing a win for the plaintiffs, the National Association of Manufacturers and The Beer Institute.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department effectively locked out Siemens Energy's Spanish subsidiary, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, from an antidumping duty investigation on utility scale wind towers from Spain, the exporter argued in an Aug. 18 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Having applied adverse facts available and denied all exporters the right to be individually examined, Commerce failed to live up to its statutory obligations, SGRE said (Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy v. United States, CIT #21-00449).
Washington state-based importer Keirton USA filed a complaint in the Court of International Trade on Aug. 19 after the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington found that the trade court was the case's proper jurisdictional home. Keirton, a self-described importer of "agricultural equipment used to process cannabis and other farm goods, including hemp and kale" is challenging CBP's deemed exclusions of shipments of such machinery as "drug paraphernalia" (Keirton USA, Inc. v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CIT #21-00452).
The Commerce Department found that the Rediscount Loan Program offered to Kenertec Power System is an export subsidy and thus excluded from Kenertec's upstream subsidy calculation in a countervailing duty investigation on utility scale wind towers from Indonesia, it said in Aug. 19 remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade. Bringing the results of the review in line with CIT's decision in the matter, Commerce dropped the loan program from the CV rate it calculated in the investigation, resulting in a de minimis CVD rate for Kenertec (PT. Kenertec Power System & Wind Tower Trade Coalition v. U.S., CIT #21-03687).
The Commerce Department properly held that three companies owned by the same, although estranged, family are not affiliated for purposes of collapsing the entities in an antidumping case, the Court of International Trade said in an Aug. 20 opinion. The agency's contention that the companies did not clear any of the three standards for collapsing multiple companies for purposes of calculating a dumping margin was proper, Judge Gary Katzmann ruled.
A seafood importer, Kendell Seafood Imports, can't skirt a more than $2.5 million bill for shipments of Chilean sea bass it ordered from fishing company Chilean Sea Bass Inc., the latter company said in an Aug. 16 complaint at the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Since Kendell entered into a contract in good faith for over $5 million in sea bass for 2019-2020 and has only paid a fraction of that total price tag, the importer must pay the remainder of the bill, CSB said (Chilean Sea Bass Inc. v. Kendell Seafood Imports, Inc., D.R.I. #21-00337).